I have to blame some of this on both Intel and AMD.
I'm sorry but $200+ unlocked chips in this day and age is not exactly appealing to a wide audience. (Maybe back in 1990s top end chips costing $200 would have been big news though)
Now, If Intel gave us a $40 unlocked Celeron (or better yet unlocked BGA Celerons/mobos for even lower cost and to remove the TIM material and thickness variables) we would probably see a wider audience interested in making a desktop PC.
With that mentioned, I can only dream of the day when I can build a powerful dual core desktop (mobo/cpu/ram,SSD,case and psu) for $150 without OS. (Running Linux Mint is fine with me for such a budget machine because it is such a fine OS for low cost hardware)
(Stepping off soap box)
I don't know why people are upset over pricing. CPU prices have not inflated an awful lot over the years, truth be told. I paid around 200 bucks for a 300a unlocked celeron WAY back in the day. Now I can get an unlocked i5 for around the same price. What's the big deal? If inflation had taken full effect, an i5 caliber unlocked CPU would cost near 500$ in current days. Obviously that is not the case. It should be noted that intel had way more meaningful competition back then as well since both AMD and Cyrix copy cloned intel CPUs up to the 486 and then they branched off with the K5 and 6x86 respectively to compete with the original Pentium P54C. Speaking of which, the original pentiums for the most part cost A LOT MORE than 200 bucks.
The pentium 150 was nearly 600$ at launch by the way. Prices HAVE NOT inflated much. In fact, i'd say we have it way better now than we did back then. Overclocking is more straightforward and people expect it, whereas it was more of a slight bonus back then and not a given.
I also remember the 3dfx Voodoo 2 was around 300 bucks IIRC and only did 3d.
Pricing isn't outrageous, IMO, you get what you pay for now just like you did 10-15 years ago. Intel had the overpriced 1000$ chips back then just like they do now.