Would love for someone to elaborate a little bit. Is this deal any good for CM?
The thing I wondered about when I saw this is whether there will now be a legitimate path for getting Google Play on Cyanogen-modded devices now. I kind of get the feeling not, based on what you're saying.
If you're talking about officially, when the device is shipped, then this is true. However, one of the first steps after installing a custom rom is to flash a Google Apps package for your device (which includes Google Play). People still install Google's applications without the device passing any test.
So basically I use it as a dumb phone and it's a pretty good dumb phone.