Yep, they're bo longer in "affordable" territory.
I'm French, so I grew up with Decathlon. I haven't looked at it closely, but my general understanding is 2 fold.
1. the bikes have been so popular they've been flying off the shelves, which an economist would argue means the price was too low (equilibrium pricing theory).
2. the bike is ridden by a pro team, and the team genuinely aims to perform at the highest level, so you'd expect the frame to be able to support this ambition, so they probably do spend a lot on materials and R&D. The French are often good at actual work, and even innovation, but really bad at marketing it. For example, recent interviews point to the attention they paid to frame stiffness during a sprint. Given the insane speeds at which sprints are won, and that there are countless stages where a sprint is won by less than a bike length, as sprinter will want a bike that will be very fast, and very stiff. This new frame solves for that.
So, it annoys me a lot that their bikes are now so expensive, and I would bet that this also annoys a lot of Decathlon employees & their friends, but it's also understandable. The competition is simply over pricing stuff across the board.
Given how tight a ship Decathlon has been running for decades, i'd bet their R&D costs are a fraction of the likes of Specialized, so I would bet that they could sell the frames at a much, much lower price point. But then, point #1, where the frames would just sell out all the time, and i would even expect a grey market with people selling frames they just bought in the secondary at a premium, precisely in an effort to find an equilibrium price. Because that's exactly what i'd do. If the prices were a no brainer, I'd buy frames and sell them to people abroad.
