In my book, chips priced above $500 do not belong on "mainstream consumer platform," or non-HEDT platform. 16 cores on this platform was just AMD trying to establish some decisive leadership in an area of desktop Intel could never compete in without introducing their own HEDT chips into the mix. I don't know why this seems oblivious to some - the 3950x is the successor to the 2950x. And now, we have a 5950x at $850, on desktop!
I really hope Intel doesn't follow AMD into this dark hole of throughput dominancy, or better yet hollow desktop supremacy because there's nothing mainstream about the price. At this rate, we'll be looking at $1,000 "mainstream" cpus in the near future. Heck, it might even be too late for that because if these chips are released in limited quantities I'll bet my last dollar scalpers are going to be selling them at a grand a pop.