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Per-thread performance tends to matter much more than number of cores for the enthusiast market, which has centered around the 6700K (which I've got in my own machine right now). The 6700K retails for $330 and is about 14% faster per-thread than the 6900K, which I'm betting is a tougher proposition for AMD to manage.

This chip definitely seems rad, don't get me wrong--I just think the enthusiast market is sensitive to what this isn't, at present, doing.

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I'd say the popularity of the 6700K has a lot to do with its price point. Paired with a GTX 1070 or RX 480, for around $1000 you can build a very good gaming PC.

If you want 6 cores you can get a 6800k for $150 more, but it also has a higher TDP and requires a more expensive motherboard (X99 vs Z170 chipset). This is going to put the total price up by at least $300.

As you say most games still favour single-core performance so paying extra isn't worth it. DX12 and Vulkan will start to change that though, so let's see...

DX12/Vulkan isn't going to be a serious thing for a few years, though. At that point, I think that Optane is going to be a serious feature and upgrading to post-Skylake chipsets is gonna be on the table for those enthusiasts.

The chip auto-overclocks, too, which seems really cool

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