Hell yeah; I still haven't been able to convince Xbox users that gyro aiming is literally next generation; mostly because of their confirmation bias and Xbox controllers not having the feature yet.
Getting this hardware access available as far and wide as possible is going to make handheld gaming more attractive than ever.
The controller has gyro, and games like Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West do make use of it. There are others as well, but I'm not familiar enough with the library to recall specifics
I'd say it's a matter of preference than anything "next-gen". I really liked using a hybrid approach with the Steam Controller a few years back for some third person games with archery, but it has its own drawbacks and complexities so I could see why people would prefer the simplicity of the good ol' analogue stick.
It would be nice if the major controller APIs used for feeding input into games had native gyro support. I think that's the biggest limitation with gyro on the Steam Deck - you almost always have to use it to emulate some other input method (mouse or joystick). Almost certalnly because most games use Microsoft's XInput and that's based around the Xbox controller and its lack of gyro. I know there was a gyro server to feed Steam Deck raw gyro data directly into Yuzu and it made the gyro parts of BotW playable, but the interface used didn't seem like much of a standard outside a few emulators.