Completely agree, Onion, but I think it's more than just AMD finally putting up a fight - it's that the market is finally starting to push the CPU limits. For so long, it was always about your GPU for gamers and the mainstream, but now with "creation" exploding and so many people wanting to game and stream at the same time, there's finally a reason for many people to upgrade CPUs they haven't upgraded in 5+ years. One of the Intel reps thinks the 9900K will be comparable to the 2600K back in the day, where the latter was practically the go-to CPU for anyone building or upgrading a PC at the time.
PS. Sorry for the delay in getting the article posted... when I got home on Tuesday, I had no power (along with 179 homes in the area). Needless to say, I was not happy.