To be fair, the R&D is shared with Intel’s integrated graphics as they use the same IP blocks, so they really only need to recoup the R&D that was needed to turn that into a discrete GPU. If that was $50 million and they sell 2 million of these, they would probably recoup it. Even if they fail to recoup their R&D funds, they would be losing more money by not selling these at all, since no sales means 0 dollars of R&D would be recouped.

While this is not an ideal situation, it is a decent foundation on which to build the next generation, which should be able to improve profitability.