Can you control where your application runs so that you don't have a ton of latency between this thing and the app? Seems to me like that could destroy a lot of the supposed gains...
i used to think this way, and then i tried it, and i have to admit it's pretty good.
think of all the complexity on the other side of running a stable multi-regional database: networking, disk failure, routing, caching. all of that is negated. so yes, there is some latency, but not as much as you think, and honestly, i'd make the trade again in a heartbeat.