You seem to be under the impression that companies are stupid greedy, and that they can charge anything for anything. That's stupid. In that economic view the retort is that consumers can then tell companies to go pound sand...because virtually everything on the planet has something that will replace it. Nvidia charges $2000 for a card, people decide 40% of the performance at 20% of the price is good enough. Crypto is insane...the model switches from stakeholder to proof of work, and suddenly the crypto mining card boom dies. Every single market action will last for some time, until that imbalance is righted.
I'm going to try and make this abundantly clear, this sort of stupid kills customer bases. They will accept that you can get away with it now, but in two to three years they'll be looking for more hardware. They'll see your product, and immediately associate you with price gouging. Whenever the AI market dives, and you're back to selling GPUs to consumers for what has to be a reasonable price, you'll discover that they will not buy into your crap whenever given the choice. That's how companies record record profits, then three to four years later get bought out by their competitors who won by simply not opening their mouths.
Let me also suggest that "peanuts" for consumer GPUs is misleading. Yes, it's not their primary business segment...but it's also how they can sell their silicon to virtually anybody. Yes, AI accelerators are legally limited. At the same time, you can sell a boatload of "consumer" grade GPUs to countries adjacent to countries that are legally not able to be sold to, and watch as the middlemen grow fat and rich off of sending silicon across the border at truly silly smuggling prices. Funny how countries with no huge gaming market have had silly demand for those high end GPUs in the past couple of years...no? All you have to do is have a little inflated trade values to absorb the costs legally, then print money everywhere, while on paper meeting your requirements not to ship to countries. Seems...legit?
Let me end on an anecdote. My family used to be involved in selling bakery goods. Think Pillsbury's expensive brother. Think "fresh baked, hand made muffins" that were called what they were. Scoop and Bake. They sold a product that curb stomped the competition, because consumers could not tell the difference between 30 seconds of labor and 45 minutes of baking antics. The money was good, because they sold flour and components, and about 4-6 months in they'd introduce bakeries to scoop and bake product. 1/4 the labor cost, for a product that was superior and consistent. Yes please.
The thing is, for decades the management team knew they had the market on lock. 5% increase in flour, pass on 5% to customers, and nobody had an issue because the bakery could eat 20% and still be making a profit. That was, until the Dutch came. It was a Dutch consortium who bought the company...and decided to change how the business worked. Butter became margarine, then decreased, then they decided to decrease ingredient quantity, and finally quality. This won't mean anything to you, but an IQF blueberry (individually quick frozen) is why you buy a blueberry muffin and it isn't green on the inside. It's also 20-30% more expensive, and it's the most expensive part of that muffin. So, customers noticed quality drop. And drop. And drop. The company made huge amounts of money...at the expense of a decades long reputation. Eventually the premium product performed as bad as the cheap stuff...and customers jumped ship. The company saw their profit margins tank, and first increased price. When that drove off more customers, they tried to compete on price. With 40% of their customer base gone, and telling them to shove their scoops where the sun doesn't shine, they had pissed away a market advantage that took decades to make for about four total years of record profits...followed by none.
Tell me that doesn't sound like Nvidia right now. That doesn't sound like hedonistic DILLIGAF, that will eventually bury them in the market until AMD or Intel decide to do the same stupid thing after getting the market leadership. Nvidia is currently uncontested in the market, and instead of setting new standards for quality that would permanently relegate their competition to second string they've decided to point the gun directly at their feet and pop off a few rounds. Don't worry, the consumers don't currently have a choice so they have to go with us. So we are clear, this is why I prefer when AMD has a lead in the CPU market over Intel...because there is literally no love left for me an Intel after the socket 2011 where they decided to simply not have a good chipset...because who would ever need more than a pair of SATA III sockets? Yes, my first enthusiast platform killed my interest in every paying for another, because Intel decided since AMD wasn't competing they could release whatever and it'd be good enough. That's why I buy whatever is best, and enjoy when my AMD CPU option is best.
