I want Nvidia to not increase their prices every single year, it's quite simple. They are making billions of profits in the AI and machine learning industry, they don't need to bleed gamers for every cent in their purse. Practices like that leave a bad taste in the mouth.
It's simple but it doesn't make sense. They are a company, they are making money. I think their pricing is competitive unless they have some kind of secret agreement with AMD to keep pricing artificially high.
The whole PC market is kind of crazy right now. RAM is through the roof as well. I just built a new computer and could only afford to install 8 GB of DDR4 at the moment. I imagine those memory prices also impact the pricing of the cards. Also you have to consider inflation. Kenpachii mentioned a 580GTX for 450 US (although the original MSRP was 499 US). That would be about $513 USD today. The 1080 has a MSRP of 600 US so that is less than 20% increase for a product that: has 5 times more memory and produces about 8 times more TFlops.
I know it's frustrating but personally I feel there are way more options available now than 10 years ago. The cutting edge has never been affordable nor will be, it's for people that are willing to burn some money just to squeeze a few more FPS. That tier is not about value. There are way better value based offerings right now.
It's closer to a regular 980 (non ti).
I didn't wait for upgrading my 960 to a 1060 and it was the best decision i could make. Not only for the big gap in performance but also for the fact that the 960 was still kinda fresh and i could sell it at a decent price, making the 1060 easier to get. If you wait too long with these things, your previous hardware loses value.
Yeah, it makes sense in your situation. I'm holding to my 970, I'm thinking about building an arcade cabinet with my former computer. An important factor in my case is that I'm in Mexico, the market is a bit different than the US... Well, the whole economy, specially regarding this stuff.