Yeah I have a hard time taking the "BUT IT SOLD OUT" argument seriously. This happens every time there's a graphics card launch, going back almost two decades. Yes, the major COVID/Bitcoin-era shortage is over, but you should always expect demand to outstrip supply for the first couple months after launch. And yes, there will always be a tiny segment of the population that is willing to pay any price for a halo card, and wants it NOW.
Without knowing how many cards were offered for sale, the fact that they sold out is meaningless. What we can say for sure is that halo cards don't account for a significant portion of either NVIDIA or AMD's revenue--at least not directly. You compete at the extreme high end to win mind share that will help you sell the rest of the stack. Unfortunately it looks like we may not see a "rest of the stack" for Ada/RDNA3 any time soon; AMD and NVIDIA are leaning on their previous gen cards to fill in the lower-to-middle range (and really, what used to be considered higher end, that space between, say, $500 and $900). Maybe I'm too cynical, but as of this moment I wouldn't be surprised if NVIDIA/AMD skip reasonably priced cards for this gen entirely.