I really don't think there's any significant value to be gained by turning this into a module. Everyone wants a slightly different form factor and the thing is so easy to design around that a module isn't meaningfully achieving anything.

Touch is a niche single tasker. I'm glad they didn't include it. Using another ic for that makes sense, and folks being lazy and sticking to an EOL part to provide that functionality isn't RPi's problem. Or do it in software.

I'm with the OP on this one, I really think the foundation nailed the product definition.