Graynomad:
If you build it they will come. Maybe. We get posts here along the lines of "How do I do speech recognition while simultaneously controlling 10000 LEDs" or "How do I do pattern recognition from a digital camera".
That's already been asked, or some form of it, just recently too. Someone wants to use a camera to detect a line ... basically a line following robot, but they were trying to do it by analyzing the video.
Graynomad:
OTOH maybe Arduino is doomed to a life of controlling wearable LEDs
Or fancy window displays, or smallish matrices designs. 
Graynomad:
The alternative is to do a breakout board, with 144 pins though it will be a challenge to make it breadboad friendly.
You don't. Simply break out the pins and let people solder their wires to that. I'm thinking a large square with the pins staggered and broken out on all four sides of the IC. I mean, it's not impossible to make it breadboard friendly ... I'd break out 72 pins per side, single row, and call it a day. But changes are that would also take up the whole breadboard and not leaving a whole lot of room for anything else.