As a more PS5-oriented bit of news, I read that Ratchet and Clank's Day-One patch will include a third graphics mode: Performance Ray-Tracing. I haven't seen what exactly that will entail apart from 60 FPS (lower resolution + reduced ray count?), but it might help those that were turned off by the idea of dropping to 30 FPS just for pretty lights.
In fairness to nVidia, the MSRP was intended to be $999 but given that a large chunk of 3080 Ti's were going to end up mining or on eBay anyway... you may as well raise the price.
I'd attribute it to how Nvidia saw that people were willing to pay $1200 for the 2080 Ti, so they priced the 3080 Ti at that price point too.
Yeah but let's be real - these companies don't care if bots buy them or people. It's all the same money to them.
In some ways, I agree. In general, I think stores do like creating goodwill with their customers... especially given how cutthroat certain areas of retail have become. If Best Buy can get PS5s, Xbox Series S/X consoles, or video cards into the hands of an end user, they may end up getting more repeat business from those customers. I'd argue that consoles are likely better for that too given the peripherals and the prevalent of physical games. (Computers do have peripherals too, of course.)
I think that this whole "drop" system is BS anyway. They should just allow pre-orders (one per customer account) for their next shipment, instead of incentivizing scalpers to write scripts to scan the site constantly for a quantity change.
I've pondered the issue in the past, and the thing that I've usually run into is... there's really no great way of stopping bots and resellers. For example, at first I thought, "Well, hey... my Newegg account is around 15+ years old... why not just give preference to old account holders?" It's not an awful idea, but an old account holder can still be someone willing to scalp, and it would potentially limit people that have (relatively) recently gotten into PC gaming (i.e. only recently created a Newegg account).
Although, in that regard, it would be interesting if they could consider something like a partial allocation to old account holders. I'd say that Best Buy could do something similar. Best Buy even has their tier system, but the wrinkle in that is that their tier system is achieved through spending money in the store. Would be kind of awkward if you had to buy your way to a better chance of getting a console or graphics card.
Ultimately, I think the problem comes down to how bots are meant to automate and handle all the steps of checking out. Even if Best Buy adds an email-based confirmation code, the bot can simply retrieve the code from your email. Best Buy actually released the 3080 Ti in stores instead of online only. My local store had people camping out at night, and based on Reddit comment timestamps, they were all called for by around midnight. Maybe they could just pool up cards and start doing in-store releases again?
I still think the whole scalper thing is way overblown though. Sure scalpers are buying them to sell. Hell I did it myself but without scripts and bots. But it's just what people like to use as their excuse for not getting one without putting in any work. I put in a lot of work to get all the systems I got and it paid off.
I don't really think the opinion on bots is overblown. It is a valid issue -- more so on certain sites that lack any bot protection -- and awkwardly, it's something that I pointed out about a year ago. I recall seeing those news stories about the guy that wrote the script to help his friends buy Nintendo Switch consoles, and I said that we'd see more of it later on. The problem is that buying things is (generally) a very easy thing for software to do. Heck, Wall Street uses software to manage commodity transactions because it's far ludicrously faster and more efficient than sending a broker down to the floor.
Of course, none of this is to suggest that it's impossible to get game consoles or graphics cards. Although, I'd argue that it's quite a bit harder, and the overall shortage and semiconductor squeeze hasn't helped with that either. Times are so awkward that with the inability to build new cars, the prices on used cars has begun to shoot up to the point where people that bought used cars within the past few years have actually had them appreciate in value at the current trade-in/sales rates.