I mentioned it before in another thread a while ago, but that's the wrong way to look at it. If nobody bought the previous high priced cards (or current), then the company would be less inclined to R&D into key areas that genuinely advance gaming and benefit everyone down the line, even if that trickle down effect takes some years.
Just like with cars, if nobody buys the highest end models then the entire range takes a hit or gets abandoned as a flop and things don't innovate as quickly.
If nobody bought the higher end RTX cards then would DLSS and oher innovations that improve RT/PT and general rendering QOL gains such as ray reconstruction and RT denoising be what they are right now? Nope.
People need to be buying the expensive stuff for companies to then put money back into the pool for R&D to happen in a timely manner. People often say that AMD just don't have the R&D budget to keep up with Nvidia's speed of advancement with DLSS and the like, why is that has anyone wondered? It's because AMD gave up on the high end and R&D is 2 generations behind for PC gaming as a result.
In the same measure has Nvidia given up on PC gaming in favour of AI? Probably yes and no combined, because the AI advances directly affect PC gaming, since AI has been the key driver for RTX cards from day 1, again, because of the massive R&D put into advancing the deep learning training models to make the features we use today more efficient.
The gamers wanting mid range priced cards that perform at high end ranges need the people who are buying those high end cards to continue doing that, otherwise you don't get anywhere year after year.