I was a dev with a DK2 also. I could not find any compelling use for a gamepad in VR (outside of traditional style games with hacked on VR or space sims and racers which are better used with wheels and HOTAS anyway).

Well you are biased, sorry. You are a dev who has admitted working on a GAMEPAD game for Rift so of course you won't see the problem.

Gamepads, lack of roomscale and stuff like Gear VR is giving a bad taste of VR to the 'masses' as first point of contact, many of them claim VR is a gimmick and stuff like this (see that stupid new RPG - Chronos with the only VR part being your head glued to an in game FIXED camera) how do we convince the masses VR is NOT a gimmick if oculus are actively encourging this by bundling a gamepad?

Clearly they would have prefered to bundle touch, palmer said this in the past, that gamepads are shitty :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CoDJttJofg

But after facebook , after Gear VR and the need to create dumbed down parity with it (for ports) Palmer changed his tune. Your inability to agree with that surely means you have bias towards the company and I would expect a VR dev to want to strive for more than the 'same old shit' we've been playing for 30 years with gamepads but with VR tacked on like a 3DTV gimmick.

I'm glad Vive exists, I'm glad PSVR exists (due to motion controls available and at least DS4 having some tracking too), yes it's not meant to do 360 but it's different types of users anyway, and Sony recently said they probably could get 360 out of it (not sure how - true - but they did say it).

Anyway, thanks for your answers but I guess only true VR lovers can see how bad gamepads are, esp combined with LACK of real VR input that turns most VR games into feeling like either a floating head or someone wearing a straight jacket while strapped into a wheelchair. Am very suprised you didn't notice that while developing for rift with just a gamepad.