Except this analysis is entirely flawed for 3 reasons.
The first flaw is you are ignoring that NV raised prices 1.5-2X per each caterogy tier by re-labelling lower tiers as higher tiers, and then pushing back the
true flagship towards the 2nd half of a generation. This started not during Maxwell, but during Kepler generation. What used to be $199-249 GTX560/560Ti GF11
4 tier became $399/$499 GTX670/680 GK10
4 tier. What used to be a cut-down flagship $289 GTX560Ti 448 Core and $349 GTX570 GF110 became $649 GTX780. This trend can be clearly illustrated today with $129 GTS450 GF
106 or $149 GTX550Ti GF11
6 replaced by $199-299 GTX1060 3GB/6GB GP
106, and with $249 GTX560Ti replaced by $599-699 GTX1080.
The second flaw in your post is complete ignorance of Kepler generation and the x70 tier by simply comparing 1080 Pascal to 980 Maxwell. Even if we ignore the fact that NV increased prices 1.5-2X starting with Kepler after Fermi, NV still managed to raise prices this round significantly. GTX680 debuted at $499 while GTX1080 costs $599-699. It took at least 6 months for GTX1080 to drop down to $599 as most AIB cards cost $650 or more during the first 4 months of release. Mere months post GTX970's launch, it was easy to find $330-340 AIB GTX970 but 2-3 months post GTX1070 launch, it was not possible to find most AIB 1070 cards below $420.
The comparison of GTX1070's pricing to GTX970 isn't also complete without factoring in that GTX1070 is a more cut-down part compared to the GTX970 or GTX670 during their respective generations. GTX1070's specifications and performance delta compared to GTX1080 more closely parallel the $299 GTX660Ti in the Kepler generation. When looking at it from this perspective, it can be easily argued that GTX1070 is just a $299 GTX1060Ti priced at $379-449. GTX680 was roughly 25% faster than GTX660Ti and GTX1070 is about 22% faster. GTX670 and GTX970 were much closer to the performance of the GTX680 and GTX980. You can try to argue that GTX1080 is now priced much higher than GTX680 but then you precisely fall into your flaw of arguing that NV didn't raise prices. What NV has done is actually raised prices on both the GTX1070 and GTX1080 cards because GTX1070 is not a proper x70 series card, but one of the worst cut-down x70 cards since GTX470. At least the GTX470 was cut-down from a flagship die.
The current Titan X Pascal is not much different from a GTX570 2.56GB (aka a cut-down flagship with double the VRAM of the consumer model). Last generation's GTX980 cost $649 and that was a cut-down flagship, much in the same way $349 GTX570 was a cut-down flagship. That means $649 GTX980's predecessor cost just $349. Should NV price 3328-3456 CUDA core 1080Ti at $699 or above, it will be yet another successor to the GTX275/GTX570 tier, but priced at 2X or greater of those predecessors.
The third flaw in your post is complete ignorance that NV's gross profit margins are approaching 60%. Prior to 2012, NV's gross margins were usually between 30-48%.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/30/nvidia-corp-stock-in-3-charts.aspx
Looking at NV's gross margins from 1999-2011 reveals an even more startling picture of gross margins. From 1999-2005, NV's gross margins never exceeded much more than 40%, with 4 of 7 of those years not even hitting 40%. From 2005-2011, not once have NV's annual gross margins even reached 50%, with years 2006-2007 and 2009-2011 staying at 47% or lower. Since 2012, NV's gross margins as if by magic went to > 55% and have only risen thereafter:
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/NVIDIA_(NVDA)/Data/Gross_Margin
It can be easily concluded that NV has effectively raised GPU prices for every single dGPU tier since 2012 and used marketing names to obfuscate this fact. NV is just doing what a corporation should be doing and that is raising prices and seeing just how much the consumers are willing to pay. The introduction of the FE tax and further raising prices during Pascal generation highlights the ceiling hasn't been reached yet and we should expect even higher prices during Volta generation. The days of NV launching true flagship cards during the 1st half of a generation are over.
As a bonus point, going back to GeForce 2 and until Fermi, nearly every single true NV flagship card has outperformed NV's previous generation flagship by at least 50-80%, sometimes 100%. Neither GTX680, nor GTX980, nor GTX1080 have outperformed the previous generation NV flagship of that era (GTX 580 vs. 680, GTX980 vs. 780Ti, GTX1080 vs. 980Ti), by anywhere close to those numbers. That in itself proves alone that GTX680, 980, 1080 are not real flagships of the Kepler, Maxwell or Pascal generations -- they are simply
marketing flagships that NV was able to price at $500 and above due to lack of competition from AMD. NV's 6600GT easily outperformed the last generation's 5900U/5950U but NV didn't call it 6800GT/Ultra and priced it at $499-699 back then. Why is that? Because ATI had flagship cards ready to level 6600GT.
NV's next generation mid-range card almost always either tied or outperformed the previous generation's flagship prior to Kepler. That's why GTX680 easily beating GTX580 was nothing special as all the previous mid-range next gen x04 parts did the same. Surely, people who revisit NV's history can recall GeForce 4 Ti 4200 beating GeForce 3 Ti 500, GeForce 5600U/5700U beating GeForce 4 Ti 4600/4800, GeForce 6600GT beating 5900U/5950U, GeForce 7800GT/7950GT beating 6800U, GeForce 8800GTS and 8800GT beating 7900GTX, GeForce 260 beating 8800GTX/9800GTX, etc.
Just like the high-end audiophile headphone market, NV should keep raising prices even more to test just how much their consumer base and high-end PC gamers are willing to pay. No sense in stopping raising prices when it has worked so well since 2012. NV already priced GTX1060 at $249-299, a historical tier that used to be $129-149. With Volta, they should raise GTX2060 to $349, GTX2070 to $549, GTX2080 to $749. After all, GTX2060 will beat GTX1070, GTX2070 will beat GTX1080 and GTX2080 will beat GTX1080Ti GP102, so those prices will still be a great deal for consumers!!
or may be, just may be they have a very good pricing calculations. You'd be surprised how many business base their prices on "common sense", "what seems right" and other non-objective factors.
