Also don't forget to check out the rented dedicated server market too. It provides a good middle ground in cost/power/performance to the extremes of cloud providers and colocation.
The opposite is true for dedicated, since they have to compete with us-based players, and OVH got in the East Coast market big time. Prices are lowering.
It isn't just a "good middle ground". It is an amazing middle ground that allows you to benefit from AWS services (simply choose providers close to AWS data centres) whilst getting substantial performance/cost benefits.
I would imagine at minimum you are getting 10x the performance compared to a typical VPS.
I've seen cases where there are charges (as only one example) of $10 per month to be able to do a remote reboot which of course can be done on any box with an IPMI at no charge if it's your box and that's the way you bought it. So if you don't know what you are doing my point is you can easily be lured into thinking you are paying a reasonable price but then paying more simply because you aren't doing a true comparison of features and benefits.