Matt from IGN has an expected "rant" in the mailbag regarding the issue. A lot of his opinion is based on the fact that he has an HDTV so obviously he's going to consider this a bigger deal than those of us who don't have one. One line though I feel really nailed what's wrong with Nintendo's decision here:
"But with Nintendo, why does it always come down to an either/or decision? In this case, we either get high-definition games, or we get a weird, new controller. Why does a major sacrifice always have to made in order to innovate? Why can't we have both? It's such an off-the-wall approach to appeasing consumers. Imagine if Toyota came out and said, 'Well, our new Camry will have a revolutionary new steering wheel, but because we're emphasizing this new wheel, we've cut down on horsepower by 300 percent.' It'd be a disaster. And still, this is how Nintendo works, and everyone just accepts it."
I agree with that completely. Why can't we have both? This was a problem with the Cube. Nintendo had this pretty good idea for connectivity but it failed to sell Cubes. Why? Because Nintendo ran it directly against another feature, online, that the competition was offering but they themselves weren't. So connectivity became an alternative for online which completely negated it's selling power. Connectivity should have been a bonus. Connectivity plus online would have given Nintendo a clear advantage over the competition. The Cube would have been better. Instead it was just different and being different doesn't ensure sales.
If the Rev has a new way to control games (that works with old games as well of course, otherwise that's a whole different arguement) AND HD support then the Rev is better than the PS3 and Xbox 360. How could it not be? It has an extra feature. But without HD it's just different. By having a tradeoff of features Nintendo gains nothing. The two things cancel each other out. In order to gain any sort of advantage on the competition Nintendo has to first start from a level playing field and then add something creative. They have no advantage if their new idea is at the cost of other features.