Yeah, they did a bit of tactical fraud to boost their benchmark numbers, by both overclocking them by default without telling anyone, and like, potentially sketchy manufacturing. They then of course lied and delayed addressing it as long as possible. I had to downgrade my CPU from 14th to 12th gen, because my CPU got fried and started failing.

And it's hard to say if this 'new' generation is actually fixed and stable without waiting, without seeing if mysterious failures start happening in the next year or two, so I'm not surprised sales are shit. The last two generations, 13th and 14th, both suffered from this. Who wants to buy a potentially defective chip?

Their new generation in some cases gets trounced by their previous defective generation. It doesn't even have multithreading anymore.

Intel has gone full bean counter mode, they are financialized around the world and back again trying to coast on legacy systems and monopoly power. They pocketed the CHIPS Act cash, mostly turning it into financial shenanigans rather than productive capacity.

In theory they could turn it around but it's difficult to know how precarious their operation is, it jist has all the warning signs that it could be taken out by vultures.