A few years ago it would have been odd to imagine AMD's low budget line of CPUs being roughly equivalent to Intel's i7 (relative to the time, i7 6700:...
And this is why competition is good, Intel had zero plans to increase core counts, let alone a new CPU line (i9 is a direct response to AMD's high core count CPUs).
A few years ago it would have been odd to imagine AMD's low budget line of CPUs being roughly equivalent to Intel's i7 (relative to the time, i7 6700: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/88196/intel-core-i7-6700-processor-8m-cache-up-to-4-00-ghz.html)
And this is why competition is good, Intel had zero plans to increase core counts, let alone a new CPU line (i9 is a direct response to AMD's high core count CPUs).