What's with all you people and the on/off - night/day thinking.
the "either, or" thinking.... instead of "this, and"
I think people are under the false impression that there will be "one shell to rule them all". Shells may not be terribly expensive, but this whole peripheral thing is going to spin up quickly, especially once 3rd parties figure it out (or nintendo lets them in on how the stick interface works). I _guarantee_ Nintendo itself has more than one shell coming. I be they'll have one for the SNES, N64, and GC. Maybe even one that tries to be a nice maraige of all of them... This is a high revenue avenue for them, so they will take advantage of it.
Personally, I'm predicting a GC controller type shell, like the IGN mockup, being included with the system. Reason being that they would want to support the GC games that you can *still buy* and just pop in your rev. If you want to play those retro N64 or SNES games that you download, the GC controller is adequate (no bitching that C-stick != C-buttons... it's good enough for most games). If you want a more genuine N64 or SNES pad, they'll likely have additional shells for purchase.
Now as for ports of games..... I think you'll see a lot of ports with multiple control schemes.
Why would a company, say EA, ditch the traditional controls and remove them completely? They're going to want to experiment with what will work. They would port to the Rev and add a control scheme that uses the stick, and maybe even one that uses the traditional shell + motion feedback. Just like Metroid Prime 3 will likely include the traditional style controls.
If you don't think that all 3:
1. Full traditional
2. traditional plus stick input
3. stick or stick plus analog dongle
has their advantages... then your being unfairly biased. Besides, everyone has different tastes.
Example: Madden:
1) Straight forward. Same as it is on the other consoles using the traditional shell and ignoring any movements by the stick
2) One example, you can tie one of your receivers to the movements of your controller. So you play normally and can trace a route with your controller for your receiver... want to cut left instead of the intended right? just move the controller left.
3) Not sure, but I'm sure you can come up with *several* pretty cool schemes... thing is what if EA doesn't quite get it right the first attempt with a football game on the console? What if they get it right for half of the people, and half don't care for it. Games in this mode will likely have different styles of play, and it may take a few iterations. So it doesn't hurt to have 1 and 2.
I don't think you'll see developers skimp out on 3 because it's boils down to an input in the end (same way for the DS). Figure out what movements mean what and write the routines. Did Advance Wars ditch the standard controls and only go touchscreen? No, it would be foolish. I think you'll see more of a problem with games that only support (3) and bypass (1) and (2) than the other way around. (Of coures barring the games that don't make sense to have (1) and (2))
Don't be surprised when the Revolution comes with the capability to generically map movement controls to the older games. A few templates if you will. I'm guessing downloaded games will also have a way of specifying a map of the freehand controls to that particular game.