They are not behind anything. Price wise they are as good as, or better than their peers. The down side is dodgy drivers etc. However, as I said,  the main issue I had with mine was not  the drivers it was obviously a bug in the arch. IE,  when you connected via DP the monitor would continually drop out. Not when gaming, mind. This was not just an issue for desktop ARC but also laptops. I clearly remember Warchild was it? mentioning something about the laptops at  work doing it also.
Gaming wise? mine is rock solid and I have no complaints really at all.
This aims to compete with the 4060 and  7600. The latter of which it will batter in RT and anything heavier. So at £250 it is all win.
What they are clearly trying to attempt is a coup, like AMD did with the 470 and 480. And had AMD remained on that path they would have gotten somewhere, instead of ditching it  and making Vega. I mean ffs what was going through their heads?
These  are the cards  people buy. It's a plain fact. And with AMD and  Nvidia being so greedy at this tier these could well be the go to cards for gamers.