Yep, 9070 is going to be 15% slower than the XT, so it needs to be at least 15% cheaper because the performance/$ curve favours cheaper cards. Even $519 would be better than $549 because at least then it's not priced worse than the more expensive XT sibling.
This is the same dumbass, short-sighted greed that made the 7900XT a total failure at launch. The 7900XT was a similar 15% slower than the XTX so it needed to launch at 15-20% less. $800, a price it dropped to VERY QUICKLY after launch. Asking too much at launch, only to get forcibly corrected to a more realistic price by the market achieves absolutely nothing apart from bad PR. Every launch day review (which will stick around on the net for years to come) will be "good, but too expensive - buy something else". The 7900XT has been a great ~$700 purchase for the entirety of the 2024, it was never worth $900 and launch reviews and popularity of the card would have been far more favourable if the MSRP had been $799. The increased popularity likely would have kept cards flying off shelves, and prevented AMD and its partners from having to cut the price further to $700 and below, which is a long-term financial gain that AMD missed out on by overpricing at launch and burdening the 7900XT with bad reviews that lasted for the entire two years of sale.
TL;DR - The short-lived greed will seriously hurt sales of the 9070 throughout the entire sales lifespan of the GPU, even when the price drops.
