I think the idea of what they're trying to do, controllers that are detectable in 3D space, is a great idea. We've seen great success with the Wiimote for such things, and even the PS4 has done pretty well on that front. However, I'm really not certain they're doing it properly. In general, the controller looks ridiculous, and has a severe lack of any sort of input control. Two joysticks, four face buttons, and two triggers? In this more modern age of gaming, that just doesn't feel adequate when you have peripherals like a HOTAS, the present day controllers on consoles, or even a mouse and keyboard. Games will have to be designed specifically with that controller in mind, and a great deal of actions are going to have to be mapped to motions for it to work, and the motions are going to have to be really, really tight and clean so that the user doesn't accidentally fumble it. If they did something closer to the way the Wiimote works now, with it's various selection of easy-to-reach buttons, I think it would be a lot easier to adapt the controller to games that already work now, rather than only functioning with games that will be released in the future, with the Rift in mind.
They're already bundling an x-box controller with the rift, and if you're playing flight sims, you're going to want a HOTAS. I think the idea for this is that it can feel natural enough that you almost forget you're in VR, and actually pick things up and use them in a semi-natural way.
Which is great, honestly! I'm really excited to see how that rolls out! I guess the best way to sum up my concerns is I'm afraid with their current design, the controller's going to fall on the wayside as a "gimmick", rather than a peripheral people want to include in their game, or implement if their game already exists (quite unlike the Rift, which devs seem excited to provide support for).
Based on people's reactions who've experienced this kind of thing, and the similarity with the SteamVR controllers, I think they are done right for a "natural" VR experience controller. For example, the Playstation Move controller just has 5 buttons and a trigger (compared to 2 buttons, 2 triggers, an analog stick and some sort of finger tracking for the Oculus Touch), and everyone who tried the Morpheus demos seems to think they were amazing. The main problem is that it looks like they aren't going to be shipped with the Oculus, so developers might not feel they can rely on people having them. Also, the games that work best with them might well not work at all with a gamepad.