I honestly think they really should have. I mean I love the new Nano, I'm excited about mine, but I do think for the use they are mostly marketing it for (on the go, walking/excercising, that kind of stuff) you need physical buttons. And it would have been a way to say, hey, still has physical buttons for when you can't look at it to fast forward/rewind a song. Instead it's like, you lost that functionality unless you want to pay extra. So in a way, they made it more expensive.
I personally don't care cause I already have several sets, one from my new iphone 4, one from my roommate's which I switched for my ipod's as he doesn't care about the remote, and one good set my mom actually bought me that's not apple's brand, Klipsch s4i which I really like. But I still think they should have put those in and I agree it was a cheapout on their part not to.