They needed this card a year ago. At 1/3 the price.
On some level the Titan XP makes sense. A very high level to be sure but the Titan XP is hands down the fastest single card you can buy. For $1200 you get a card more than 30% faster than the $1500 Vega. Or you could get a pair of 1080 Ti cards for $1500.....I'm not faulting AMD for not beating the high end Nvidia cards. Ryzen had to have eaten most of their R&D budget and they wanted to stick with HBM which hasn't lived up to the early hype thanks to cheaper GDDR5X and soon to come GDDR6. It's the price that confuses me.
You are exaggerating it. first it is $999 and not $1500 , when you compare compare right. The Titan XP is not water cooled.
second , The Vega Frontier is not a gaming card. Thats why more expensive . wait for the Gaming card and compare the prices. Leaks suggest it is the speed of GTX 1080 .. so expect it to be priced at $499 .
my only objection is about the $499 they ask for adding a water cooler ... The $999 is well priced compared to Titan XP .
it is 30% slower than Titan Xp (in the range of 1080 instead of 1080 ti) , but adds more RAM (16GB) ... the price s justified