The card is not going away because another manufacturer will surely jump in to buy Lexar technology. A ready made market, even if limited to pros, and cheap to buy tech will attract lots of corporate interest. This card was not abandoned, but the entire consumer market. Another memory company will surely buy the rights. Maybe Samsung since they are a major raw memory foundry but most likely a Chinese company which buys up all tech it can find and are masters as production. If that happens,Sony will have very strong competition in that would drive prices down.
Has any viable technology not been grabbed by another company when one company exits a field? I can't think of one.
Remember when IBM abandoned personal computers and their laptops after losing lots of money. The decision was not even announced before a company in China bought the rights and had new higher feature models out, from a small company no one had heard of. Now people know it, Lenovo as the biggest seller of laptops in the world. They also hired more US employees in the US than IBM had in that division. They also bought the Intel server rights in 2014 and turned that into a profitable business that Intel was losing money in. Don't worry, if any market is there...there is...a smart aggressive Asian company will snap it up and make a success of it.
Heck, even abandoned vinyl record production facilities were snapped up when most thought it was dead but now outsell CD by a wide margin.
Until another maker comes in, the D500 and D5 might take a serious price hit so maybe I can buy one of each "worthless" cameras. Anyone want to sell me their D5 cheap now that it is worthless?