Around 1999 SGI Octanes were about 50K, at the time NT machines (think Intergraph) appeared that were, for many, many purposes, just as capable. They were 10K.
In addition the MIPS chip was considerably worse than a dual proc x86 machine of the same vintage. I was working at a company where there was a C++ API. Compilation time on the SGI was 2 hours. It was 10 minutes on the Intergraph.
When cards like the Nvidia Quadro and FireGL cards came they were better than SGI machines and cost a few thousand dollars.
This guy worked for NEXT, who were eaten early because they produced massively overpriced workstations that there was a small market for. They didn't even survive the workstation market, let alone the coming wave of better hardware from very large development budgets for mass market parts.