Can't tell what is Intel's plan, but it is possible that they may want to revive their HEDT segment to compete with AMD's Threadripper. Current Raptor Lake chip is called 24 cores, but its just 8 P-cores with a bunch of E-cores as support. As compared to a proper 34 P-cores chip, the performance delta is going to be significant. Given that AMD sells proper 16 cores processor, I feel there's still a gap that Intel can fill between what they offer now. They can as usual cut down on key features, even with high core count.