Frankly I didn't even expect AMD to go much beyond 8 cores with Zen 2. But in retrospect it wouldn't make sense for them to remain at eight. If AMD can offer more than just an IPC gain (not to be snuffed at by any means), a clock speed boost (again not to be snuffed at), and refinement to the IF, why not? If they kept it at eight cores they'd not just run the risk of Intel responding with something powerful (10nm will eventually come), they'd also be missing out on a lot of income. The rumoured higher priced CPUs are going to have possibly higher profit margins. The 3850X is twice the cores of the 3600X but is more than twice the price.