I can halfway understand why Microsoft showed Natal so early, they were able to scoop Sony on their—ridiculous looking—motion controller. But did it really give them a market advantage? With an 18 month reveal-to-rollout window and brand-name change in the middle of that, consumers are likely to lose most of the interest they have in the product before it hits the streets. Especially now that people are starting to become bored with the novelty motion controls in general.

From a marketing standpoint, re-revealing Natal a year later as Kinect has diminished any brand recognition that they have built over the last twelve months. Microsoft had massive recognition with Natal, it was ambiguous sounding, plus it’s easy to say and spell. To replace it with Kinect, an intentional misspelling of a commonly used word reeks of Web 2.0 wannabe-ism. I predict that when Kinect launches this fall people will still be asking for Natal when they stop by their local electronics store.

Overall, this whole Natal debacle points out one of my biggest pet peeves with the gaming industry at the moment, the over-marketing of games and products. Take E3 for instance, half of the big titles that were revealed had already been announced months ago, and they won’t even come out until sometime in 2011. As a gamer, I get so tired of seeing game-footage beforehand that I don’t even feel the need to play most games when they do finally hit the street. It’s time for the industry to start marketing smarter not harder.