My thoughts on Intel beating AMD again:

TL:DR version first: For the past couple of months, the only people who can afford to build a new PC in the first place are people who can afford 8700k's anyway.

In more detail: The 8700k and Rzyen 5 1600 are in completely different price brackets and appeal to entirely different demographics. During the summer and fall, the GPU shortage was an issue, but not nearly to the level is has been since the Holidays. The price gouging wasn't as severe and budget Nvidia options were still available. DDR4 ram prices also hadn't started to spike as sharply yet. As such people were still building systems, but were downsizing their motherboard and CPU budgets to compensate for market trends and were veering more towards the price-to-performance options, such as the 1600.

However, as the cryptocurrency mining resurgence began anew in late 2017 and early 2018, the GPU market got worse than ever, with even the 'budget' options from both AMD and Nvidia being cannibalized to feed the needs of miners and gamers alike, resulting in the extreme price gouging we've been seeing as of late. This, coupled with DDR4 prices rising back to the level of their initial release MSRP, led to an environment where a 'budget' build, or even a 'mid-range' build using all new components wasn't just difficult, it was outright impossible.

At this point, the only people who could afford to build a system with new components were people fortunate or affluent enough to not be as affected by GPU and DDR4 prices in the first place. This demographic has a level of discretionary income available to them such that they can, and do, buy the absolute best components, like CPU's, available at the time. Truthfully, these are people to whom the 1600 was never within their consideration anyway. Many of the people who would have bought a 1600? Can't afford to even try right now.

Another note of consideration is that the buyers and builders who ARE within the income bracket to which the Ryzen series appeals, like myself, are most likely taking a 'wait-and-see' approach and waiting for 3 things before they bite the bullet on new components:

1. GPU prices to normalize,

2. DDR4 prices to drop again,

3. Zen+ to hit the market, whether for the sake of buying the new generation or to take advantage of the additional price drop on the first-gen Ryzen chips that will result.