Short version:

- I would speculate that whoever gets quality 2TB or larger microSD cards to market at a reasonable price point will make a killing with the Deckers

- I would speculate that whoever gets quality 2TB or larger 2230 format SSDs to market at a reasonable price point will make a killing with the Deckers

- I am hopeful that that dirty business practice of crippling PC releases of popular features available on low powered consoles (such as split-screen co-op play) will begin to be challenged and called out as the Steam Deck makes PC gaming more "console like" than ever before.

- I'm also hopeful that we'll see another "shot in the arm" for better battery and energy storage solutions, and maybe even a surge of more full featured devices getting more and more mobile than ever before at manageable price points.

Long version:

I think most of us in this subreddit would agree that the Steam Deck is, at the very least, an interesting device. Based on limited information, I am also under the impression that the Steam Deck has and will continue to sell like hotcakes, barring a complete meltdown of supply chains / World War III.

That being said, I hope the Steam Deck may spur advances in a few areas that have been lagging way behind what I had hoped.

Being one of those "xennial" weirdos, I really like having a lot of local storage for my data for a few reasons; partially because I live in the middle of nowhere with shitty wireless connectivity, partially because I'm a huge media nerd that loves having access to music, movies, and games I can share via mobile electronics, and partially because I think humanity's already pretty much driven itself to extinction, and I want to archive stuff.

That being said, the failure of small high capacity high speed storage media being available (in spite of regulations for the next generation of such media having been written years ago) has been incredibly frustrating. MicroSD card standards from 2009 supported up to 2TB capacities, which still haven't materialized over a decade later. 1 TB microSDs only became available in the last few years, and only became somewhat affordable in the last year or two. The SD Express format is at least two years old now, but products have only started trickling onto the market at the beginning of this year, even though there's no way to really take advantage of them yet. Frankly, I'm disappointed that Valve didn't go for a SD Express microSD slot, since it would have likely pushed innovation faster.

I bought the 400 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB microSD cards soon after they came out and went on sale for my various devices (smartphone, Surface Go, camera, etc.) and still marvel that such a tiny sliver of plastic and sand can hold so much stuff. However, devices like the Steam Deck will (hopefully) increase demand, increase production, and lower cost for these high capacity storage devices. I'm guessing that the first company to get 2TB microSD cards to market at an even remotely reasonable price point will end up making a lot of money off of Steam Deck users, as well as other gaming and mobile media devices.

Along these same lines, I'd speculate that whoever gets a quality 2230 format m.2 SSD in 2TB or larger capacity to market at a decent price will also make a killing due to the Deck.

Even though a number of smartphone companies are moving away from the microSD format in their top tier products (much to my annoyance), I can't help but wonder if the demand for these dinky-ass high capacity and high speed storage devices will continue to surge as new surge of devices tries to ride the Steam Deck wave and "get smol."

With the Steam Deck quickly taking up a unique place as the most "PC console" on the market (easily surpassing the Xbox in this regard), I'm also hoping we may see some areas of glaring neglect by game publishers get better addressed. For fellow long-time gaming enthusiasts who like couch co-op, I'm guessing the intentional and glaring crippling of modern game launches for PC is a point of contention. Removing existing split-screen co-op from a game that has been developed for Windows on Xbox when releasing the Windows PC version has been a noticeable practice now for years, with the obvious intention being that game publishers and console manufacturers are trying to make consumers buy a low-end gaming console to do split-screen co-op with their friends, even if they already have an 8k capable gaming rig. Even though I frankly don't see the Deck as being a good system for couch co-op due to it's lowish resolutions, I can't help but hope the Deck may start putting more pressure on publishers to STOP intentionally crippling PC releases by stripping out features the low powered consoles are allowed to have. This industry trend has been a glaringly immoral trend that clearly has nothing to do with serving the end-user, and I really hope more people will start to speak up about this poor business practice as they start to more frequently encounter it.

Though it's already an active ongoing race, I'm also hoping the Deck may also be another shot in the arm for high performance batteries / energy storage technologies, whether it be in the form of external accessories (battery packs), or internal upgrades.

What are some other technological innovations you hope the Steam Deck may accelerate or bring about? Think I'm way off on anything?