4090's have consistently been around 2000 dollars. I don't think there's many gamers who would be affected by price fluctuations of the 4090 or even the 4080.

This is out of touch; they were mad before and they will be mad again. Lots of people spend a huge chunk of their modest disposable income on high end gaming gear, and the only upside of these issues for them is that eventually, YEARS down the line, capacity/supply issues MIGHT calm down in a way that yields some benefits.

They're going to realize soon enough that they've basically just been told that the extremely shitty problem they thought they'd moved beyond is back with a vengeance and the next generation of gaming cards has the potential to make the past few rounds of scalping shit-shows look tame.

Gamers have a TON of really good really affordable options. But you kind of need 24gb min unless you're using heavy quantization. So 3090 and 4090's are what local llm people are building with (mostly 3090's as you can get then for about $700, and they're dang good)