In part, it's the other manufacturing trying to increase sales based on the reputation of the ROG mobos, which are top of the line gaming mobos. The Rock came out with the Fatal1ty's a while back and have done fairly well with them, shortly afterwards, think with the Z77, MSI jumped in trying to steal some market share by taking a couple of their regular mobo lines (the 45 and 65) and changing the color scheme to Red and Black and calling them 'Gaming' mobos (which they've continued, and now GigaByte has joined in with their Red/Black 'gaming' mobos....all are lower priced (under the then ROG prices) in an effort to draw customers to them w/ the red/black look......Asus responded with the Hero line (new in the Z87 mobos and followed with the additional lower priced ROG mobo the Ranger in the Z97 mobo lineup - which sadly is still a "maybe' for those in the US, appears they still haven't decided if it will get a US release, the Hero is selling so well, no real need for a lower priced entry level ROG mobo
The ROG mobos are great, I love 'em, but they aren't for everybody and as always budget plays in....I lean to them for their OC abilities, good power management, DRAM handling and BIOS features (for tuning). I've still got my P67 Fatal1ty running (2500K at 4.8, 32 GB of 2133/9 RJ X) and it's plenty good for most anybody
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