I postponed a purchase of a fully loaded 13 inch model because of the lack of compelling enhancements (not sold on the bar) and these reports of battery life issues likely mean I will not make the purchase at all. At least 3 people I know are in the same boat and could have purchased at launch. While purely anecdotal and selection bias (all of us work in tech), but that's close to $10k in sales right there.
Best case, I'll skip this generation, but I'm strongly considering razer blade stealth + core.
I'm in dire need for an upgrade, too, and have been broken up about the fact that there is no dGPU-free option this time around. As well as the battery life issues, which probably are at least tangentially related to the dGPU.
If there was any clarity as to when we could expect a new MBP, I'd very strongly consider waiting. But otherwise, I'm thinking I'll just bite the bullet on the current one, mainly because of the keyboard (entirely subjective, but I very much like it), and the screen (just as subjective). Anecdotally, I've seen a reasonable number of people say that the new MBPs run cooler and quieter, which, to me, is very appealing in a laptop.
As far as TouchBar goes: while playing with it at the store, I found some reasonably cute uses that might offset the loss of function keys, such as the seek-bar for Picture-in-Picture or AirPlay videos. And, of course, TouchID.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: if at all feasible – definitely wait for a refresh. But, personally, after taking the time to think about it, I've found sufficient reasons to upgrade even to the 2016 model.
Had my new rMBP+TB machine for a month now, and I seriously can't see any use of the Touchbar that makes a difference to me. I simply don't ever look up there. Its not useful in bed - when laying down with laptop on lap, I can't even see the Touchbar screen.
So to me its a near-total useless 'feature' that has the potential to be reverted in the next generation. Unless I see a really killer app for it, I'll just continue ignoring it - and one of the reasons I may not see it, is that Apple are discouraging developers from using it as a display and requiring, rather, that it be used as a control surface. If I had an RSS feed on the thing, I'd find it a lot more useful - but Apple have a policy against that sort of thing. This seems like a broken policy, to me, though ..
That's just the thing - my upgraded '12 15 inch MBP with 16GB RAM can last me until the chassis give out. To help with weight while traveling, I've been using an iPad + VPS for coding.
Switching back to Linux no longer feels like a downgrade after a year of VIM over SSH.
Best case, I'll skip this generation, but I'm strongly considering razer blade stealth + core.