This change was made due to overwhelming support for it by the community. Some will abandon it, others will finally get a chance to mine it. All in all, it will serve to decrease supply to match demand for the coin. Until payment processors are completed demand will be entirely determined by investors. Once I can slow down this insane development cycle I can focus on payment processors.
I think its a great move to limit the overall supply. However, instead of mining at a low block reward for the reasons people mentioned above (low incentive to mine due to small block rewards) you may want to consider implementing PoS sooner with a small percentage. Maybe even a dynamic interest rate model that is network dependent and capped at 2.5 percent (similar to Vericoin).
Users would then be incentivized to keep their wallet open to help secure the network.