The problem is that AMD refuses to compete in the high-end area.
That's not really the problem. The problem is that mainstream graphics cards now cost over $300 instead of over $150, thanks to nVidia's price gouging, enabled by blind consumerism.
AMD must pick their battles right now, due to their limited budget, especially for R&D. Flagship cards is not where the bulk of the money is, so, AMD stays clear of it. They are much better off within the $200 - $500 range, and that is what they've been doing since Polaris was first released.
Now that RDNA is here, which has proven itself as an architecture in terms of performance, they'll tackle the power consumption with RDNA2, and then go for the big guns.
People love to talk about the high-end as if it's a must to release such a card. It really isn't. It's all for online bragging rights and nothing else. If the Steam hardware survey is anything to go by, this is how things look right now;
The most popular card: GTX 1060 at 14.64%
The most popular RTX card: RTX 2060 at 1.95%
What does that tell you?
Even worse, AMD has an uphill battle, simply because people blindly go for nVidia. Look at this;
Second most popular card overall: GTX 1050 Ti at 9.10%
Third most popular card overall: GTX 1050 at 5.18%
Most popular AMD card: RX 580 at 1.54%
Second most popular AMD card: RX 570 at 0.79%
All the ones that bought a GTX 1050(Ti) are basically retards for not going with the RX 570 instead. The 5700XT, arguably the best card for the money right now, is a mere 0.22%, while the RTX 2060 SUPER is 0.25% and the RTX 2070 SUPER is 0.42%. It's easy to blame AMD (or nVidia for that matter) for the current market situation. The truth is that it's the consumer's fault. They gobble up whatever nVidia throws out. When AMD is competitive, they go for the now relatively lower prices for nVidia cards, rather than supporting the company that caused those lower prices. And then people wonder why AMD ditched them at the high end. If I was in charge of AMD I'd ditch making graphics cards for the desktop altogether. Let them choke on the green they love to swallow so much.
/rant
As for the whole RTX faster than consoles thing... nVidia damage control continues... Of all things, they wouldn't want consoles to make their RTX gimmick irrelevant...