It doesn't matter. It's an add-on and it costs $150. Only a fraction of the Xbox 360 audience will buy it regardless of how good the initial software lineup is, and therefore developers will soon give up on throwing any significant resources toward it. And therefore by the end of next year there will only be a handful of worthwhile games which take advantage of Natal properly and therefore people won't feel inclined to buy it. And therefore developers won't see any reason to develop good games for it and therefore and so on and so forth.
We will be talking about Natal at this E3. And we will be talking about Natal at E3 in 2011. And then next year Microsoft will act like they don't even remember Natal because by then it will have failed to sell any decent numbers or even to make any sort of impression on the public. That's just the way these things go. Now if you think $150 is a fair price to pay for this device, then more power to you, but let's not pretend that what you are buying is going to be relevant to your gaming or anybody else's by this time in 2012.
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However, they will be successful in that it gives them a test-bed for their next-gen systems. They may even be setup in such a way that they will be transferable to the next-gen, and also bundled with the next-gen PS4 and 360-2. I see little reason why that isn't possible. That would make releasing them this late in the current generation make a lot more sense.
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I think Microsoft and Sony will try to spin Natal and Move as just test runs when they fail, but I don't think they are releasing these products and anticipating that they will fail. I talked about this before, but I'll repeat it again.
First of all, releasing a product that's doomed to failure is a horrible way of doing business no matter what kind of PR sheen you try to put on it after the fact. Not only does it waste money, it also gives the perception that either you've been badly defeated or you never made a serious effort to begin with. This stuff matters. There was a time when Sony was the invincible juggernaut in the videogame arena, but now they've been handed two unequivocal defeats in this generation (in terms of sales). When Move also fails, it's going to be that much harder for Sony to convince people to have any confidence in their next venture.
Secondly, by the time Natal and Move have been deemed failures, there will still be another two or three years left in the life cycle of the Xbox 360 and the PS3. In 2014, Kaz Hirai will come up on stage at E3 to announce the PS4, and when he says, "And the PS4 is fully compatible with Move!" the general response will be, "The what? Oh, that thing which went the way of the Virtual Boy two years ago? Does anybody still have theirs?" At one point I thought the same as you that the idea was to develop these technologies to be used on the next generation rather than this one, but when I looked at the timeline, I realized that it made no sense. These peripherals will not transfer to the next generation because nobody will own them.
Xbox Live on the original Xbox was an example of how you do a test run. It was conceived as an integral part of the console from the beginning, it was always well-supported, and it was still in wide general use by the time the current generation rolled around. It's even remained in service up until this year. That is not going to be true of Natal and Move. Those peripherals are going to be dumped before we get to the next generation.
To me, the greatest value of Natal and Move derives from PR but not in the way you think. Microsoft and Sony have been getting hit over and over with the fact that the Wii has something they don't. Yeah, you can pooh pooh the Wii motion controls, but there are consumers who don't read videogame forums or pay much particular attention to the industry who, when they look at the consoles side by side, will say, "Well that one over there has lots of buttons I will have to learn how to use and this one over here has an intuitive controller that I can just pick up. Plus it's cheaper." Natal and Move are attempts to say, "No wait! We've got intuitive motion controls too! Give us a chance!" Sure, the actual peripherals will be dead and unsupported pretty soon, but the uninformed consumer doesn't know that.
And the thing is Microsoft and Sony aren't idiots. They have to realize what they're getting into here, and they have to know that nothing they can possibly do at this point will give Natal and Move any life beyond the year 2012. I'm not saying anything here they don't already know (at least I hope not because otherwise that would be pathetic). So this says to me that notwithstanding the gripes of hardcore gamers, the damage from missing out on the casual gamer crowd must be so great that they are willing to take on a suicide mission like this.