Joss I believe an 8 core is a totally safe buy in terms of "future proofing".

It depends how your "future proofing" is based, Nehalen was released in november 2008, almost 11 years from there, that was the first quad-core with hyperthreading and from that there has not been much excitement till this moment, if it was not for ryzen then the 9900k would have never existed, the 9700k would still be 4 cores/8 threads, resident evil 2 remake would have never needed more than 2 cores to work properly, most games would have their cpu recommendation up to 2 cores which would be in the $200 range and the top desktop cpu 9700k 4 cores 8 threads would have still been sold for around $350 and Intel would be laughing and celebrating amd never caught up to them by have had sabotaged amd in all fronts and so on, that is how intel does its business and has been for the past 30 years or so.So I guess the history was different so, resident evil 2 remake needs 4 cores to work properly minimum, core count doubled from 4 to 8 and now 12 and next year 16 cores, cost wise in line with the market, $499 for 12 cores, instead of $2000, tables have turned and the future seems to be bright.Now you ask me, what is "future proofing" and I say, it's the development of business services within the ecosystem.8 cores cpus might last for the next 5 years or so, don't expect more than that, developers will make sure to use all possible resources.