It does matter because the last thing we'd want is for humanity (which can feel) to be wiped out by a machine (unfeeling, possibly) and leave behind a universe where said machine grows and destroys all feeling things it comes across.

Also whether a machine is able to feel or not will affect whether making such machines is ethical.

Also hypothetical "brain uploads" some people talk about would be horrifying if the copy is unfeeling and the original feeling human dies. It would just be loss of life.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness is very important for far future ethics and policy, but just hard, or impossible, to answer.