I think there's a lot of potential. Right now it's limited to the sandwich form-factor due to the base board (the board with 2 PCIe x16 and 1 PCIe x4), but if that could be sold separately, then it'll allow custom case creators on here to create cases on their own.
What I'm really hoping for is the base board to be manufactured so it's thinner and a riser cable can be used so it can be in the console form factor, maybe even getting rid of the PCIe X4 slot. It seems like a very basic board, if more SFF oriented companies like Zotac or ASrock don't create that, then maybe the Chinese will do it on their own and we'll see some on Taobao.
On top of that, would love Noctua or other CPU cooling companies to offer cooling solutions for the NUC module, which may allow for more flexibility with desktop CPUs.
Even if it doesn't tick all of the boxes to begin with, I think it's a big step forward.