The reason for the whole haptic feedback and touch screen thing was so that you could play mouse+keyboard games while sitting on a couch in your living room. If you've ever tried to do this, you've probably realized that without a desk, your hands are on the mouse and keyboard at funny angles and your wrists don't take long to cramp up, and it's a lot harder to share couch space with a bulky keyboard in your lap and the necessity of some level space for the mouse.
Now, I don't really know how well it will work (early reviews seem to say it does a pretty good job on some games but I'm sure there's some games that will simply require too many keybinds) but I really like the idea of what it's trying to accomplish. As far as I'm aware, the previous touch pad in the center would have been able to support about eight button functions (tap and double tap in each of four segments) as some gesture and swipe commands. Now it's down to just eight button functions, although probably faster to use. That might have been the line that cuts off a few games with a library of commands.
Regardless of all the good and bad things said about it, I really don't think it's possible to pass judgement until a final version becomes available. Nonetheless, it at least looks like it has a chance of providing support for regular controller games, while adding some M+KB games to the list of games you can play sitting on the couch with your friends.