ASUS Management: Listen up everyone, we've been feverishly talking with Nvidia about the supply chain for the GA104 and GA102 chips and it's not looking good. We can't get enough in to keep up with demand for our customers and it's looking bad....real bad. Without enough product to produce and ship, we're not hitting numbers and our investors are extremely concerned. So, we've decided to help make up for the deficit of GPUs manufactured we're going to hike prices.
ASUS Employee 1: Won't that piss off our customers and drive them away....no other manufacturer has announced a price hike on their GPUs.
ASUS Management: We hear you, but we don't acknowledge your question because you're not important. As I was saying, the price hike on GPUs is going to be exorbitant. The Nvidia MSRP for a 3070 is $499. We will be looking at a minimum of a 20% price hike on our entry level 3070, making the retail priced version at $599.
ASUS Employee 2: That puts our cards priced higher than the RX 6800 from AMD.....what kind of madness is this?
ASUS Management: <talking quietly to security> Remove that employee from the building, let him know we'll ship his personal belongings to his house. <speaking to the company> We understand that we cannot just come right out and say we're hiking GPU prices - that will look exceptionally poor. We've decided
ASUS Employee 2: Hey! What are you guys doing? Let go of me! I won't go quietly! You can't do this to....
ASUS Management: to apply this price hike to all PC hardware components. Pricing will be anywhere from 20 to 40%, maybe even a bit higher depending on the product...I'd ask if there were any questions, but your thoughts on the matter are not relevant. Oh, and Happy New Year, everyone!