If you watch the video carefully you'll see that the player bends pitch down as well as up. I do believe that he bends down more often than up.

It's inevitable that you will have to learn some new technique to make use of it. But it's also clear that you gain some pretty big benefits for certain kinds of instruments if you go to the trouble. If you don't want to make use of it just turn off the sensors and do things the traditional way.

Some previous efforts (which ultimately failed) fundamentally changed the feel of the keys, for example a keybed where the keys themselves wiggled side-to-side. This one doesn't (or shouldn't, although the current "stick-on" implementation certainly will change the feel of the keys).

This technology is sort of like today's aftertouch but polyphonic and multi-function. Aftertouch on keyboards today is usually only of the channel variety (one sensor for the entire keyboard) and is relatively expensive (manufacturers routinely remove it when cost reducing). And it changes the feel when a key bottoms out, which is one of the reasons you almost never see it on piano-action keybeds. Perhaps this technology could change all of that.

Unfortunately, this technology looks like it is even more expensive than aftertouch. Assuming that the cost could be reduced, to be commercially successful I believe it has to be completely integrated into a keybed by a keyboard manufacturer. And it has to be almost (or in fact totally) invisible. Stick-ons just won't do.

As for the article "tending" to imply that this is a gimmick I don't interpret what is written that way. Not at all.