Does anyone know if (or when) TESO will provide native support for the XBOX 360 controller (same as Skyrim for example) or am I going to have to resort to 3rd party software to emulate keyboard input ?

The devs have categorically stated that no it will not. Please use the search function on the site as this has been discussed many times before.

You can use Xpadder and people have already created profiles for the game using that.