Even if you use byte code, the driver will have to compile your shader for the target hardware. It won't be nearly as fast as what the game does on console - loading a blob in GPU memory. It will definitely be faster than compiling a text representation, but still not fast enough to skip the uebershader.
Right, I know about the JIT compiler in the user mode half of GPU drivers. It’s just much faster than the source code compiler.
It’s possible the DXBC byte code generation might work fast enough for their application without the overhead of the ubershader, or the complexity of their hybrid approach.
