You can't have 2 halo products when there's no demand and the previous gen still exist.
I get the feeling some don't know what halo and flagship are. I mixed them up too at first.
Flagship is the most hyped or prominent, leading product on offer by a company. For the 40 series, that's the 4090.
Halo is a step above that, always coming at a later time.
4080 is neither of these.
No demand? There clearly is demand. 4090 is selling, these will do the same.
Cloud gaming suddenly looks more attractive when I realize I won't need to pay to run a GPU at 300 watt.
Yeah - no... everyday household appliances dunk on that, and the cost of cloud subscription - any subscription(screw you, EA Play) really - over time will pass up the small bump in yearly gpu operating costs easily....
Plus, many regions are still getting shafted by their ISPs.
High end RTX cards have become status symbols amongst gamers.
The demographic is shifting, and not necessarily in a good way. If some think Nvidia isn't making more profit off these higher priced cards even if fewer are buying... it's clearly having a 'positive effect' on profits, otherwise they'd have changed it back, yes?
So if it's good for profits, where does the bad come in? Reduced support/aid from the tech community. But who cares about that?
Troubleshooting is something that comes with this territory; any problems that the user can't resolve, will see a harder time getting help from others. The interest in the hardware may still be there, but the hands on experience will be less.
Hell, one can already see some of this going on now...
When people complain they can't afford a luxury item it seems to me like a sense of entitlement that they think should be able to get one. Especially when there are plenty of lower cost value cards out there. Luxury items are priced as such, not intended to sell at cost.
They were more affordable to more folks 5+ years ago. ~700USD xx80Tis were expensive(depending on POV), but more folks could snatch one up without giving up a kidney or whatever.
Now, with higher costs on darn near everything, and stagnated wages? The 2080Ti, 3080Ti, and this? Including inflation, this is banana nut crunch, and I like banana nut crunch(cereal)...
when is a gamer going to be able to show off their GPU?
Is there some trend with amateur streamers where they point their camera at their GPU instead of at their face?
Reddit, youtube, and other social media. Even this site, TPU, LTT forums, etc...