Nvidia is also clearly differentiating the 5090 as the gaming card for people who want the best and an extra thousand dollars is a rounding error. They could have sold it for $1500 and still made big coin, but no doubt the extra $500 is pure wealth tax.
It probably serves to make the 4070 look reasonably priced, even though it isn't.
Gaming enthusiasts didn't beat an eye at 4090 price and won't beat one there either.
4090 was already priced for high income (in first world countries) people. Nvidia saw 4090s were being sold on second hand market way beyond 2k. They merely milking the cow.
Double the bandwidth, double the ram, double the pins, and double the power isn't cheap. I wouldn't be surprised if the profit on the 4090 was less than the 4080, especially since any R&D costs will be spread over significantly less units.
Leaks indicate that the PCB has 14 layers with a 512-bit memory bus. It also has 32GB of GDDR7 memory and the die size is expected to be huge. This is all expensive. Would you prefer that they had not made the card and instead made a lesser card that was cheaper to make to avoid the higher price? That is the AMD strategy and they have lower prices.
That PCB is probably a few dollars per unit. The die is probably the same as the one in the 5070. I've no doubt it's an expensive product to build, but that doesn't mean the price is cost plus markup.
It probably serves to make the 4070 look reasonably priced, even though it isn't.