I'm going against the grain and make the assertion that improving the Touch Events was the better option here. Touch Events are supported by more browsers and devices and already have many of the functional requirements that Pointer Events have.

While it makes sense to have a consistent API, for the foreseeable future there will be three event standards; touch, pointer, and mouse. While if there was focus on an existing standard it would leave web developers with a smaller room for error. A direct result of Blink using the Pointer Event standard is that there will be more web bloat such as jQuery wrappers to abstract interaction.

Most web developers like have experienced the mess of getting touch events and mouse events feeling consistent across different devices and browsers. Throwing more hardware and an extra API into the mix is only going to make things worse.

I welcome the much needed pressure support, for the average web developer and user the result will likely be detrimental. Colour me cynical, each browser has to nail its implementation or we're going to see another messy standard. IE for example still does not support Touch Events, even on WP. This makes front end development painful if you support the device.