ATI shouldn't even try to sell at enthusiast prices since almost all will wait till the G300 comes out. ATI won't sell very many of the high end cards and that will hurt their finances so it would be better if they started out at a lower price range since that will get the customers that want a good card but are not trying to get the expensive cards. This would be a much better financial decision and doing that before Christmas and before the G300 comes out should get them a huge amount of sales and might put them into a position that will allow them to adjust prices even further depending on what the equivalent G300 card is. Also with the difficulties that Nvidia is having they may decide to decrease the prices of their cards to stay competitive during the holiday season since they won't be able to have their new series out in time. (I would if I was in that situation)

Great here goes GSC AGAIN, chasing graphic whores instead of trying to stabilize gameplay, story and quality.

I'm going to wait and switch to the GT300 series mainly because I want to be able to use the 3D technology if I so choose. I guess I'd need to upgrade to a 120hz monitor, too - too bad Newegg doesn't seem to allow me to sort monitors by refresh rate…

3d Technology… seems to be the next step for PC. Odd.

Ah, now I get it, OK :) . This decision by ATI to not release any lower end parts yet could have a number of reasons, of course. From unfinished specs to TSMC (the company that manufactures the chips) not having enough capacity to mass produce the entire ATI range.
Or maybe ATI is not seeing any urgency to release lower end parts yet since the 4870 and 4850 are very well established in that price segment. OK, they "only" got DirectX 10.1 support but I'm not sure ATI really wants to advertise DirectX 11 as a selling point for the lower end parts anyway. All they'd end up with would be a bunch of pissed off customers because the few games that support DirectX 11 features are likely going to be a slideshow on low end cards.
Finally, I wouldn't really be too surprised if the 5850 and 5870 are actually the low end parts of the 5xxx generation and that the prices are in fact going to drop down to the $150 -200 price range that you mentioned once the G300 based cards become widely available. Anything seems possible.

Edit: Duh. The new mid-range/lower end cards have been revealed today. They are going to be the HD 5770 and 5750. Full story here.

I don't think that DirectX 11 is going to really matter much anytime soon. Sure, some developers are going to implement some of the DirectX 11 features that can be implemented with minimal effort or ones that actually make their job easier but generally I would not seriously expect of any developers to all of a sudden declare the PC their lead platform. The consoles are going to continue being the lead platforms and there is no DirectX 11 on consoles so there isn't really much hope for any significant visual improvements in the foreseeable future in my opinion.

Yeah, that was the last ATI card I owned. Still, have it but never put it in another pc. It doesn't deserve being used.

Great to hear its gotten better. Still won't go near them again unless Nvidia releases another bad line when one is needed.

That 9600 was still better than those FX cards.

Thanks for the link, I had a feeling the whole story hadn't been unveiled yet. ;)

It just wouldn't have made much sense if the 5850 was going to be their lowest end product.

I do wish ATI well though, even though I'm definitely going with nVidia again when I get my next card. We need ATI to stay competitive, so nVidia can't completely dominate the market and drive prices through the roof.