GPUS should be general purpose and with Nvidia throwing all their eggs in the ML basket and charging a fortune it might risk alienating their core users (gamers).
Sometime early next year Nvidia will announce the Volta enthusiast cards (GTX 1170, 1180?), priced in line with the current-gen enthusiast cards (GTX 1070, 1080).
If you want the new shiny right now, you can, but as always you can get 85% of the same gaming performance for 25% of the price by waiting a few months.
Why is that exactly? This looks to be a great deal given its specs in comparison to the rest of the market, and us ML folks like our application specific GPUs because a specific card will always outperform a generic card and you're not paying for things you don't need. I can't even imagine what a generalist card which works for ML would look like. Do you actually work in this space?
Not all GPU's need to be good at all things. There are plenty of general-purpose chipsets out there for those that want one, and I'd say there's room in the market for highly specialized GPU's and if those are priced incorrectly, the market will correct it. The irony in your statement is that this is designed to be a cheaper version of a very popular card.
It is true that Nvidia could be artificially reducing supply.