I understand your initial reaction that the planned obsolescence argument may not fully apply to the point you’re making, which is that specifically the cheaper product has more memory and can therefore last longer in games in that regard. I’ve seen this “planned obsolescence” argument a lot lately (perhaps too easily).

But I see how it is applied in a certain way. What could be the strategy behind this is to give constraints to all non-privileged models:
– very little VRAM (for longer than +/- 2 years)
– VRAM is very slow
GPU chip is very slow
– no specific technology support (often a somewhat forced refusal to build decent support for older products, like DLSS3, you often see this kind of antics mainly with Nvidia) and a lot of co-op building AAA titles that currently only work well If you’re using the latter technology (I’m thinking, for example, Cyberpunk 2077 and technologies like Ray tracing and DLSS).
– etc.

What I think often happens is that consumers look at a mid-range card and think: That’s enough for me for now and I don’t want to spend (even) more on it, and they probably don’t analyze it much either. But in a reasonably short period of time (after +/- two years, for example) there will come a moment, with a particular game or several games that the consumer himself finds interesting, when one or more of the examples mentioned will lead to a very noticeable bottleneck, at the time Earlier than it should have been. As a result, this can lead to new buying behavior for both the minimum and mid-range cards.

In other words: As long as you’re still buying an Nvidia product, Nvidia always wins. In the case of a low-range or mid-range card, you can upgrade relatively quickly. And if you buy a high-quality card and keep it for a long time, you can spend more than 1000 euros. As long as the other player(s) in the market play this game a little bit, Nvidia won’t get tired of it and think again when purchasing this new video card. Despite the fact that Nvidia has been quite anti-consumer for so long, it’s been very successful for years, so it seems like it’s working from a financial perspective.

In short, I think it’s kind of (call it a different kind of) thoughtful planned mystery.