I actually think when it's all said and done, the WiiU gamepad could prove to be more revolutionary then the Wii remote. However that doesn't neccessarily mean the console will sell more.
Personally I don't really consider the Wii remote to be as big of a revolution as a lot of people claim it was. Yeah sure it was incredibly appealing for a lot of people. But how many games really benefited from it? I would actually say the N64 controller was more revolutionary as it introduced the analog stick which is now a standard across game controllers and is used across a huge number of games. A lot of the types of game we play today would suffer from the loss of the analog stick, but how many would suffer from the loss of motion control?
I also believe that it wasn't the Wii remote on it's own that was so appealing, it was Wii Sports. If instead of making Wii Sports, Nintendo had focused their resources on Metroid Prime 3, bundled that with the Wii and marketed it as "a new intuitive control scheme for shooting games", I imagine the Wii's sales would look very different.
That's what I believe the WiiU is missing right now. I think Touch controls and the dual screen setup has a lot more potential to improve the games we play. (Seriously i think touchscreens could very well be a standard for controllers in the future) But it doesn't have a game with as clear of a message as Wii Sports. Also I don't think the fact that the controller "looks complicated" is really an issue, because there's no reason why devs can't make casual games that only use the easy to understand touch screen.
So basically an innovative controller is all well and good. But unless it has a game that uses it in a way that will get the mass market saying "Oh that looks like something I'd be interested in", then it won't translate into sales. If instead Sony are able to provide that game for the PS4, with or without a new controller, then they will win.
P.S. Since we're on the subject of kicking
