I don't believe that's true, like at all. They have tons of margin in higher end monitors like this one. Shaving a couple bucks of a product is obviously smart business but we entered an age where profits are pursued at any cost and dropping features for the sake of it is included in that.
There's a big difference between choosing the cheaper of 2 components that serve the same purpose and choosing the cheaper of 2 components where 1 can only meet part of the requirements. The first is the nature of any round of design optimization, the second is the stupid age we live in.
There's tons of other meaningless shit they could have cut instead, like the stupid red led in the stand, or the led matrix in the back with the ROG logo (that probably will be programable because of course it will since it's an ROG product), but instead it's implementing a newer port that's cut and, from the Asus announcement page, even HDR and the USB Hub are disabled if you're using USB Power delivery because..... well because fuck you RGB leds is more important