>Unless you're in a true 'I need something right now' situation, it seems to me that the key for this generation of GPUs is avoiding a day1 purchase at the launch (formerly known as List or MSRP) price and waiting for street prices that better reflects actual value (whether you chose to buy a previous or current gen card).
I disagree, also with Jarred's "tough sell" takeaway.
First, yours (and Jarred's) are the enthusiast's view, ie buying a GPU is largely a want, not a need. If the new cards isn't to your liking, you can afford to wait, or buy a better price/perf alternative.
Regular people buy a GPU when they need to, and they'll buy new regardless of price/perf. The reality is that there's no real alternative to AMD/Nvidia for GPUs. It's a duopoly. People didn't stop buying even during the height of the crypto craze when scalper pricing reigned supreme.
The question then is just how large a group are the DIY desktop PC enthusiasts compared to the rest gaming PC market, and I doubt it's large enough to matter. Sure, we're the influencers for the regular buyers, and our opinion have some sway. But at the end of the day, people will buy the best they can get at the time, and they'll move on with their lives, not sitting around kvetching about the "good old days."
I disagree, as I doubt pricing will drop substantially because of thumbs-down from enthusiasts. Both Nvidia & AMD are on the record in stating that they'll undership to manage inventory and counteract reduced demand. At least for Nvidia GPUs, pricing has been remarkably stable for the 3000 series. AMD cards have had more movement for the 6000 series, but I think AMD has learned from Nvid, and 7000 pricing will likely be as stable.
Whatever pricing the new gaming GPUs come to, I doubt the companies care, given the burgeoning AI market where profits are much larger. In fact, they may well be happy to have reduced demand from the gaming PC market, so they can devote that much more resources to producing more AI wares. I think reducing price to stimulate demand is the last thing they would do. If they had wanted more demand, they would have put out cards with better price/perf in the first place.
One metric to gauge how much sway enthusiasts have over the PC market is to monitor changes to the monthly Steam survey. Already we can see that enthusiasts' opinion don't really matter, as they by and large favor AMD for better price/perf, whereas Nvidia cards dominate the survey. I don't see this changing for this gen.