Retailers don't price gouge the consoles!
Yup, products just as in demand and just as limited availability throughout the past several decades and apparently forever before that (that I had no experience of) RRP was basically the max price you'd pay. Over time as you start competing for sales and clearing out stock the price drops below RRP but consoles somehow go for exactly RRP everywhere all the time and never go over (in retail).
The second people started accepting retailers price gouging the second others followed suit. It's still basically exclusive PC parts places I see that get away with this. YOu see it on monitors yet I don't see it on tvs from any other electronics stores. IN fact any electronics store, tv, microwaves, fridges, etc, max prices I see are RRP, often cheaper. Hell those places you often get deals below RRP on launch.
Paying over RRP hurts you for every sale ever. It doesn't matter if you're rich, if you're paying £680 for a 600 card then you'll also pay £1400 for a £1200 card and eventually you'll get price gouged on everything you ever buy. Being rich or having enough cash to buy anyway doesn't mean you can't get better value or not be ripped off, it will still leave you more money to spend on other things.
The real killer is while the card price goes up it's in this case OCUK and maybe the distributor who gets the increased money while AMD's cut doesn't go up at all.
I hope that at some point in the future AMD/Nvidia/Intel start enforcing RRP by stating that any retailers found to be price gouging will be dropped off lists for people receiving supply for launches and won't get priority on stock during high demand periods.
The difficulty of RRP is different countries have inflation differences, depressions, hyper inflation of their currency, etc so having a rolling upper limit on price everywhere at all times is probably harder than it sounds at first glance. It would be nice to see an RRP that is roughly equivalent everywhere for launch though.