While I'm a fan of light themes with few options, one thing that this debate fails to take into account is the user.

If your theme audience is familiar with WordPress, and knows what the good plugins are and how to use them, then fantastic. Everyone reading this is probably in that category.

However, if you are a first time user of WordPress, and you are more concerned with running your business than messing around with your website, then this approach fails.

In this case a theme that has some options (not 150, just some important ones), and some built in functionality to eliminate the need for plugins is best for the user. Most of our theme users fall into this category, and I will tell you that they wouldn't load in 5-10 plugins for sliders, contact forms, seo, lightboxes, etc. They wouldn't know how, and they wouldn't care enough to take the time to learn.

They don't want a theme that developers think is awesome because it is light and optionless, they want a website that they can get up fast that looks good. It becomes a question of, should we force people to use technology the way we think it should be used, or should we let them use it the way they want to?

I'm not trying to argue with anyone here, just giving you my experience.