Shaunodon said:
AFAIK the board partners can't really decide what the MSRP models should be priced at, unless they just refuse to supply many of them and only want to sell the models with an unnecessary amount of gizmos on them. Even the markups on those overpriced models should still mostly be up to the discretion of the retailers. The Red Devil here was $1500 NZD at launch up $180 from the $1320 Sapphire Pulse, a 12% markup. And for a slight update, both the Powercolor Reaper and Sapphire Pulse are still available on backorder for that original $1320 price. They have increased the Red Devil to $1550 (also on backorder). Meanwhile in the states on launch day, Microcenter had a lot more models available at the MSRP price but they were also marking up models like the Red Devil to something ridiculous like 40% above MSRP. That's not just on the AIBs but moreso the retailers feeling for demand on certain models and people still willing to buy them regardless of cost. A lot of those heavily marked up models were selling at Microcenter while they had MSRP models available. That's why I found Gamer Nexus' video on the topic slightly disingenous; you can say the retailers or the board partners don't have to supply so many of those extra models, but if they're also supplying more than enough MSRP models and people still choose to go another direction, who does that ultimately fall on? |
By board partners deciding the MSRP I just meant they won't make the standard MSRP models but they will just produce the fancy cooler card and charge people $100 premium for it effectively become the standard price point for the GPU's.
