Honestly, given tech in general this year (virtually everything has been delayed from any manufacturer, costs have gone up, shipments have been delayed), phones, pc hardware etc, you name it; given this I was expecting there to not be that much stock launch day. AMD needed to at least respond in kind or Nvidia would have had way too much time to build steam on stocks, mindshare and shipments; the hand was forced to a degree; and I think it's now very clear that Nvidia launched early because they were worried and wanted to get orders whilst they had less competition (which they now have to 3070/3080 and 3090).
What will matter is how much stock is available in the coming few weeks. Nvidia are now several months after launch, and you still cannot buy the 3080 etc, people are still waiting from launch day virtually, so that is a bonafide paper launch (and obviously to get cards out ahead of AMD).
If AMD have decent availability in coming weeks via AIBs, or at least reasonable shipments, then it's not a paper launch. The AIBs start rolling out all of next week; so its not like these are far behind. Lets see where we are by mid December and we will be able to see if this was a paper launch (demand but no supply), or just a toilet paper launch (supply but way too much demand at the moment).
I am not even looking to buy, but these do look like good cards for the money, and definitely bring competition back into the market at the high end. Yes, there are some feature disparities, but a lot of people play at 1080p or 1440p, FAR more than 4K, and these new AMD cards are a resounding success at those more popular resolutions, whilst still performant at 4k, and the RT capabilities of the 6800XT seem to be at least matching or beating the 2080TI, which was Nvidia's top 1st RT attempt.
Bear in mind just how much smaller AMD are compared to Nvidia OR Intel, and just how far behind they were a year or two ago, and its pretty clear that AMD with an R&D budget are a scary force (which they hadn't had for many years), and they're just getting going. Look at what has happened with Intel and the Ryzen CPUs, this is literally gen 2 RDNA we are seeing here and look at the performance leap vs RDNA 1, and this is also AMDs first RT generation, and its already beating Nvidia's G1.
That is a pretty outstanding result, and if they carry on this trajectory we are going to see some pretty epic battles in the graphics market over the next few years.