I'm not sure about Europe but the GTX 280 had an original MSRP of $650, high end PC gaming was NEVER cheap to begin with ... 

You also didn't address Shadow1980's point either ... 

I don't want to compare console gaming to pc gaming but god dammit. The gap is just so huge.

The posts in here about PC gaming and prices are ridiculous. This is literally as top of the line as you can get. Obviously the price will be high compared to the PS4 which is at the lower mid-end.

The HD5850 launched for $230 and was faster than a GTX 285.

Nvidia is definitely forcing Amd's hand to measure up, because these cards are pretty amazing for the power and price. Hopefully Polaris 10 is just as good for an even better price...

The HD5850 was $260 on release and was released 7 months after the GTX 285 plus Moore's Law was still alive too back then ... 

Must have been € 230 then sorry, currency can make things confusing sometimes :-p. And i agree, progress was much stellar back then but really that makes the much higher prices these days feel wven worse.

And there where from different generations, plus he's comparing the second best card with the top of the line. The GTX 285 was faster than the HD 4890, 4870 and 4850, which were the cards its competition had at the time.

A better, and more appropiate, comparison would be the GTX 1070 being faster than a GTX 980Ti while being almost half its price.

The soon to be minimum hardware for VR.

Depending on benchmarks I might put two of those in my next rig. Seems a bit too cheap though considering how much you have to pay for a 980ti.

I would still like to wait for the 1080ti though.