Theoretically, they should be able to launch something more competitive in that form-factor next year, though, right?

With this wattage I'm not sure why they went double slot in this generation. Maybe they thought having a few dB more silence was a more unique placement for the card or something. The thickness of a GPU largely comes from the cooler, everything else typically fits under the height of the display connectors, and this GPU could certainly work with a single slot cooler.