The reason people say this is not pixel art is for two reasons. 1) The background looks like a gradient. Gradients are frowned upon. Good color choice with dithering to blend the colors together is preferable. 2) The high color count. Using the lowest amount of colors in a piece is called optimization. Getting tons of detail out of few colors is considered impressive. Take a look and study this piece by buloght. Only 16 colors yet tons of depth and detail. If he did the same with 254 colors, it would still look nice, but wouldn't be as impressive.
So in short, Gradients and High color count =
Dithering and Optimization =