Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 costs as much as a whole gaming PC–but it sure is fast

Was a bit hyperbolic, but PS5 comparison doesn't work. Sony always intended to sell more PS5s, whereas FE cards have always been unavailable for 99% of their lifetimes.

I honestly don't quite understand why this is how the GPU business works: NVidia or AMD makes a new chip, makes a card around it, presents and sells only a few of them, and then tons of other manufacturers get the chip and they make their own cards with it, ad all of them are very similar. Why does NVidia not cut out the middle man and sell more cards directly to consumers?

The analogy to PS5 is fundamentally flawed.

As more time passed, the chances for an individual to acquire a PS5 only continuously increased (to the point of it becoming as easy as just walking into any random Target or Best Buy and buying it on the spot).

With Founder’s Edition NVDA cards, it is the exact opposite movement. If you weren’t lucky enough to grab one within the first few weeks of the release (at the very most), your chances to ever obtain one at retail price are only sharply going down. And buying it on release isn’t any easier than buying a PS5 was either (if anything, it is more difficult imo).

Sony wants to sell as many PS5s as possible, so they ramped up manufacturing bandwidth, kept restocking it as much as they could, etc. And eventually everyone who wants to get one can easily do so.

NVDA just wants to manufacture a batch or so of reference cards and call it a day. There are never plans to continue producing them or restocking them, not even talking about ramping up their manufacuring bandwidth. Once they are gone, they are gone.

Mind you, I am not trying to make some judgement against NVDA with this. There is imo nothing wrong with what they are doing. It is a little bit frustrating, purely on a personal level, only because their reference cards are actually good. NVDA not wanting to be that deeply involved in that business (beyond just a single batch of reference cards) imo makes sense to me. But the analogy with PS5 is a bit non-sensical, as it has nothing in common and follow the exact opposite trends.