Intel are not selling many HEDT chips, they are not very good, at least if the rainforest best sellers list is anything to go by they are constantly lagging well behind the competition, even Bulldozer is consistently outselling them.
This is their attempt to reinvigorate some of that mindshare, to a limited extent it probably will work, few people will be buying the 9900K as gaming CPU's but some of those looking at the 7820-X and thinking "nope i think i'll go for this Threadripper" will go back to Intel.
Short term that's great for Intel, but in about 6 months with Ryzen 3000 the 9900K is going to be obsolete, very obsolete.