Guys, I wasn't taking about the exchange rate. I was talking about the world inflation rate due to the cost of rare materials and services. Services include the engineering that designed and built this new chip. A chip that will be obsolete in 3 years, even though the camera will last far long. Europe, Canada, South America, Africa, Asia, the USA, have all got to deal with rising costs.
I am aware that you main point is different.
Speaking about cost though, the exchange rate does matter, but it should if anything make the D3x cheaper in Japan compared to the D3. Assuming that Nikon buys some parts of the D3 abroad, it should be cheaper for them to purchase them now than it has been in the last 8 years, the Yen has never been stronger.
Inflation in Japan has been nil or negative these past few years, and the cost of developing the D3x has clearly not been affected any such engineering consulting fees inflation. Besides, most of the Nikon engineers are based in Tokyo and there has been no significant salary inflation in Japan these past years also.
This being said, Nikon might be anticipating some raising production costs as a result of un-direct financial consideration related to the cost of credit, etc... but I think that factoring all this in in a single high end product wouldn't make so much sense.
So the bottom line is that, considering all we know today, it seems doubtful that the price of the D3x is driven my increased costs at Nikon.
From the point of view of a working pro, it is true that the camera is only one expenditure among others, but they all are, aren't they? All these equipments are complex and cost money to produce, and agreeing happily to a significant price increase of one of them on the grounds that it represents only a few % of the total is opening the door to a large scale inflation accross the board.
Today, the price gap between a D3x and an A900 - mostly competitive for the applications at hand - is equal to that of an Epson 9900 44 inch print weighting 240 pounds (inks included). Of course, considering the price of switching over - even partially - things are not that clear, but Nikon shooters hate to be shown so clearly that they are held hostage in a proprietary system that might induce more and more costs in the coming years.
Is it foolish to react here? Probably so.
Cheers,
Bernard