This is not true or misunderstood. Even now, as I look at on of my dashboards, the last reported hour was 13:00 -- it is 17:30. As well, there is no data for three of the morning hours, where this asset has not been down and sees millions of impressions a day. No to mention, the feature page for this new product states, "Processing: data freshness within a maximum of 4 hours 98% of the time," [1] which is not too far off a typical day with a non-premium plan.
"We just turned the reports on for a number of you, and over the coming weeks, everyone will have access to Real-Time. If you can’t wait, sign up for early access here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/. We’d love to hear about how you are using (or planning to use) Real-Time, so please share in the comments."
[1] http://www.google.com/analytics/premium/features.html#tab0=3