Well they could't spin it any other way could they? The 6800 is half way in between a 3070 and 3080.
They could have overplayed the price difference, but instead they said it's worth the extra money.
From the benchmarks I have seen, it looks like big navi is faster and Ampere is "wider". The 6800XT is good enough for my use case (sim racing in VR on a reverb) but the 3080 is better for VR, so the 6800XT is my second choice and I'm not paying over $700 for one. I'll wait until next year for a 3080 if they want more than that.