And at the price that the 2TB model is, you'd be an idiot to buy it.

You can always replace the storage yourself. A 2TB NVMe doesnt even cost $300 (most are around $250), and if you swapped it yourself, you'd have a 512 GB one to stick into an enclosure and use as a portable hard drive.

And you don't even have to do that immediately. 512 GB is plenty to start. Especially since not everyone plays enormous AAA games with hundreds of mods. You can upgrade at any time.

It's worth remembering that most discussions like this are dominated by enthusiasts (including both of us) whereas most people in general are not enthusiasts.

In my experience, most people don't actively play more than 512GB worth of games at once, and you can add to this with spare microSD cards or other PCs on the network. Steam makes transferring game installs to the main SSD from elsewhere rather painless.

Even as a bit of a data hoarder myself, I only really go beyond 512GB to: 1) keep pace with multiple friend groups that like entirely different game genres I need to all keep available at a moment's notice, and 2) maintain games modded outside the Steam workshop that I may not play that often but still want to not have to set up more than necessary.

You also save 9 months of waiting on the pre-order list but neither is a good selling point.