No, menu bar items being hidden when there are too many of them has happened for a decade.

The notch has just made menu bar space more scarce than it used to be.

If you opened an app like Xcode with a lot of menus options, it would extend beyond across the screen and cover up your menu bar icons.

If I open Xcode today on a 14" MacBook, two menu items extend past the notch, and they still hide your menu bar icons.

This has been the case for a long long time, and it's always been an obvious failure case.

Menu bar icons overflowing. The notch just makes it a problem quicker, and in an exciting new way.