Even in a situation of an unfair market economy dominated by the large corporation, there should be at least a seed of reasoning for that high pricing.
How will nvidia convince the average joe that they must pay now, all of a sudden, a grand for their new graphics cards.
The mining craze is dead now. So why?
yeah i know ... but i call that the "Switzerland syndrome"
as i said, would you like a 544$ 1070?
nah right luckily mining is declining (let's hope 7X00 and 40XX will now awake that plague again )
but still as i mentioned : between the 1070 and 2070, thus the new gen was priced 120$ higher than the previous gen at that time thus if lucky the 40XX will be still in the same price range, or at worse case scenario, the 40XX will get a price hike, they already shown us they would do it ... from 6XX to 10XX and then 20XX to 30XX/40XX, if the 4070 is really priced 500$ it would only make a 1$ hike over the "499$" of the 2070/3070. (if it's not a one time occurence, then it's a trend.)
i should quote ... but, oh well...
anyhow, i did not want to be stuck with my 1070 for 6 more years ... thus once the unicorn was finally found (aka reference MSRP) on one discounted custom model i jumped
(yeah, i'm getting old repeating myself over and over
)