In your opinion it is "badly" priced (I think you meant poorly priced). From my point of view (Director of Sales & Marketing) it is the perfect price. It's a single card that beats the gtx 580, check. It is $200 cheaper than the 6990 but gets similarly awesome performance, check. It will sell like crazy, check.
GTX 580 at launch: $500+
GTX 590 at launch: $700+
6870X2 at launch: $519
It crushes the GTX 580's performance at practically the same launch price. Not to mention it is a dual gpu single card solution. You think they are going to launch a card that is more powerful than the GTX 580 (a dual gpu single card at that) for less than a GTX 580? Please tell me how that makes any sense at all. You are paying for innovation, ingenuity, and the convenience of a single card. Not to mention manufacturing costs...
I think the price is great for PowerColor and the other reference card carriers. They will make the proverbial killing off of this card.
So, again, it is "badly priced" in your opinion.
The pricing is
bad, and it is indeed my
opinion. You, however, are bringing up plenty of points yet your post reads like a press release intended to promote the product. As usual for press releases it has little to do with features that interest the consumer. I couldn't care less for "Innovation and ingenuity" when I buy a product: In the end, I care how it performs and how much it costs (Case in point: The Phenom was way more innovative than the Core 2 Quad: It had an IMC and it was a single-die design. Did it matter? Heck no). The GTX580 is just as convenient (after all, it is a single card), so that point is moot as well. Nobody cares for the launch prices, either: The only thing that matters is how they are priced one against another
now and how they will be priced one against the other in the future.
It doesn't crush the GTX580's performance, either. It is faster, yes, but not by an amount significant enough to warrant the adjective of "crushing" (and if you take specific titles such as Civ5, AvP or Crysis as examples, then the same can be done in the opposite direction with F1 2010, CoD:BO, HAWX2 and Fallout New Vegas. It should also be noted, for fairness, that in nearly all cases both setups are way above the playable level anyway, so the advantages in either direction are rather moot). It also suffers from problems that affect dual-GPU setups, such as problems with certain specific titles (F1 2010), scaling problems with games where Crossfire support is (still) poor and high temperatures (up to 86c under load) when compared to an OC'ed GTX580 model with a custom cooler (which also costs less).
Overall, this is a battle which I think the GTX580 wins, especially when a top-of-the-line model costs a bit less (Asus GTX580 DCII - 499$, Gigabyte GTX580UD - 499$, eVGA DS Superclocked - 499$, Galaxy GTX580 Tri-Fan - 489$, ), and reference cards are sitting around or below the 470$ mark.
If this thing launched at 470-480$ then it would've been a different story, and if the prices fall to that mark quickly (with the GTX580 remaining in its place) then I will be singing a different tune, but as it stands at the moment, the pricing is bad, poor, or incorrect. Pick whichever adjective you prefer. It might be the perfect price for you as a "Director of Sales and Marketing", but it isn't the perfect price for the consumer, which is what matters.