@General C#, if you check out the BUILD conference main page, it would appear that HTML5 and JS are the only way in. Everything else, at least today, is open speculation. Microsoft should've have been wiser to avoid this kind of problem.
I agree with you that W8 tiles are just another form of Gadgets, and Microsoft is just extending the Gadget API to support dual action applications, using a concept similar to Flyouts.
Since Gadgets can be "natively" developed with Silverlight, they're nothing to stop it from being used on "Immersive" application.
The real problem I see is that by opening the door on tiles for HTML, you're supposed to allow HTML4 (not just HTML5) and that opens the door to UI fragmentation. With Silverlight, you have a tight XML which follows your interface guidelines with ease. Witness WP7, where most apps follow the metro UI. With HTML and JavaScript you'll see badly ported Gadgets used as tiles, which would then reveal the whole content using regular HTML which will destroy the whole immersive idea. Also, as other's have pointed out, neither Silverlight, nor HTML5 allow you to create "real" apps, like WordLens or Office, just cutesy "gadgets". That was one of the main reasons Palm's webOS suffered against iOS, although it offered a far better UI experience. Adobe AIR is another example, even though it uses the Flash framework to overcome some of the problems.
Time will tell if this initial mishap was enough to derail Windows 8. It start looking as "Windows 8" is more akin to Longhorn, while the ultimate OS might well be another Vista.
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