Nvidia could do exactly that, but why would they? They still have 80% market share IIRC, so what incentive is there to take lesser profits? None. I feel like NV keeps consumer graphics around simply because the business unit is too large to just shutter all at once. Let's be real; graphics chips were undervalued relative to their compute power for most of their history. The amount of raw compute available per $ compared to a general-purpose CPU was insane. There just wasn't a broadly-enough deployed use case besides graphics that took advantage of that style of processing power to absorb the manufacturing capacity, so that silicon was essentially dumped on the consumer graphics market at what was essentially a pretty hefty discount. Now those other use cases exist, and we're seeing the market adjust accordingly.
From one angle, I hate it. Prices rising out of step with capability (or, alternatively, not falling for the same capability) harms the PC gaming hobby as a whole. BUT. I also feel like we're due for a reckoning. Graphics requirements keep going up without a commensurate quality increase, requiring this ever-more-expensive hardware (A 4070 ti for USD900? Really!?) to simply run well. Maybe if the bottom falls out, we can see a shift to making games good first, and pretty second. But I'm not holding my breath.
