Now waiting for the additional bomb shell that Z370 is Z270 rebranded.
It almost certainly is. The problem is probably the socket or shall I say power deliver or more specifically power use. Given the recent intel trends I'm pretty certain the 91w vs 95w TDP from 7700k to 8700k doesn't actually reflect the real difference in power use. would not surprise me if the 8700 needs 33% more power than a 7700k and for that new socket spec was required.
Not an engineer but I doubt it's an easy thing to make an existing socket compatible to a new, more power hungry chip with more cores. Ryzen+ on AM4 will have same core counts and some improvements but will be same core counts and for zen 2 / 7nm almost certainly a new board will be needed too or you won't get more cores.
Just know that Skylake loves voltage at those clocks
Sure glad I did not buy into Z270. So Z370 will be a single-gen product, then? Might need to rethink my desire for a mainstream hexacore.
Yeah that is essential the downside with CFL. It's obvious it will have 0 upgrade path. On the otherhand CPU upgrades are hardly worth it anyway. By the time they become obsolete you will want a new platform with new features (usb, pcie version and lanes, ram,...) anyway.