Intel not mentioning price means this tech will be out of consumer reach for years. RAM is $5/gb while SSD is at .30 - .60. Would I pay $2/gb for something that isn't going to affect perceivable performance on my machine?

But if your dataset fits in an NVDIMM of xpoint maybe you might want it and take the simplicity of developing against persistent memory thats good enough for your access patterns.

How is this different from Samsung's 3D vertical nand?

XPoint is much faster (and much more expensive) than any NAND.