sorry for the bumb but peraps it could be used for controller extensions maybe? somewhat in a similar fashion of how the circle pad was done on the 3ds,
I'm thinking of something like what ya saw with the wii where a bunch of extensions had the wii mote tag along by being pluged into it just to act as a messenger between it and the wii like the guitar hero controllers even if you never used the wii mote buttons on it after getting into the game