The company's name, Microsoft, explains the hefty price tag.

Natal will be awesome:

I expect that natal will reign supreme for the following:

-hefty price tag of natal, $50 or $59 games way too much for a casual

-MS's market is heavily shooter and action oriented, slapping balls around or whatever won't be a big attraction

-the development for these games is expensive, so MS (and ultimately the consumer) will be paying for this somehow, so expect the dev issue to slightly dampen things

-All indications show that there isn't that much good content out for natal.  Of course I could be proven wrong in a week, but at the same time, i'd expect some good leaks thus far instead of the chicken dancing thing lol

Well we dont know if there will be games included when you buy it or if they're downloadable for a cheaper price. i'm not sure how much it will cost to develop games for it, but i agree that M$ pass down the costs to the consumer with huge commission.

i agree on the last point no content has been shown to cater to the core market. the fact that there are no leaks, means theres nothing other than family/kids games or perhaps M$ are saving it for the show to blow us away (doubtful).

The development will be more expensive than a control, b/c with a control you can program a certain button push and the same button will always do the same thing.  Combo of buttons, etc.  

Natal has to get the 360's cpu to make a "map" of the playing area and figure out what the hands are doing and translate that into movements or ball swats or whatever.  Just the fact that the control approach will be so different shows that the costs for development will be higher or at the very least, i'd expect that development for a radically different control appraoch to be higher b/c it's always easier to program for the way things have been done.

im leaning towards it being a success, its gonna be pretty attractive for casuals, on core gaming i think it will suck but its not meant for that anyway.

i dont think it will sell at $149. i think its going to sell at $99. ms is aparently going to market it like its a new console so that should help. if they have a lot of good games for it then i think it will succede, and sale alot of units.

Hmmm, yeah the key thing here is games, and in that sense move already has a slight edge. because of the similarities between move and wii 3rd party developers can go cross platform; resident evil the darkside chronicles or dead space extraction etc.

so the question is does M$ have 3rd party support, if not then their 1st party line up better be something special imo.

Pachter made a comment on GTTV several weeks ago that 'Natal' has so many games coming out that some 3rd party publishers said they had to push their games into next year because their wasn't enough slots available in the release window.

Its true that we haven't really seen anything in the last 12 months except for Ricochet (and I never .... EVER want to see that again).  But it might be that MS has gotten a lot better on keeping secrets.  A day or two before the E3 show I'd imagine some stuff will start to slip out (just like the rumored Harmonix dancing game).

Regardless, don't necessarily look at the lack of leaks as a sign there is no software.  We'll know more in a week.  Wow ... I can't believe we're almost there.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. interesting.if anything good comes out for it (more than 15 perfect games that appeal to me)i'll get it in the long run for my PC. used of course.

In the long run, I think Natal will be more successful in the PC space than in the console space.  Natal seems like an interface that can be utilized best for things like menus, browers, and whatnot.  Just like the DS's touchscreen is only useful for some types of games, but it works great in the menu of every DS game, and touchscreens are also widely used outside of gaming.  Natal integrated into a Windows interface would be cool.

However, I also believe Natal-like devices won't become truly successful until they're used alongside some sort of peripheral, like the gloves worn by Tom Cruise in Minority Report (which contain tiny LEDs in the fingertips, which I suppose is more similar to Move than Natal).  I actually think the limited accuracy of Natal will hold it back in the near term, limiting it to experiences like Richochet at first.  Without at least accurate finger tracking, I don't think it'll be feasible to integrate Natal into something like Windows at this point in time.  I think the technology that Natal demonstrates is definitely in the early stages, and it won't be truly successful until it gets its Wii Motion Plus in a few years.