Is that really a fact? Do you have any links for that? If that's the case, then I see no problems, since you can have all the new possibilities of the Revolution controller and use an old controller to play the older games or games developed for traditional consoles.

Regarding the batteries issue, I'm not sure why people are still talking about it. Wireless controllers already exist and don't have problems like that. Besides, PS3 will also have wireless controllers, so this (non-)issue is not Nintendo/Revolution specific.