Most of what you've said is right... except for that exchange.
Think of it this way... Marketing has little to do with the actual price of the cards and which cards get sold as what.
The truth is that the management of the company makes such decisions and when they see that their middle range card is on-par with the performance of AMD's high-end there is absolutely no reason for them to release it as a mid-range card at mid-range prices. If they're going to beat AMD in either case, why should they be doing it for $200 (or $250) less? Realistically, this will be one of the first GPUs in a LONG time that NVIDIA is actually able to sell at a huge profit margin without having to sell it as a TESLA or Quadro. Because of this, I hope, we'll see NVIDIA coming out with more less expensive GPUs with better performance... AND once the GK110 stuff comes out, I think we may see a STEEP drop in GK104 prices which would be good for everyone.
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