From my memory of the situation:
When retailers and developers heard MS was working on the xbox and the vast amounts of cash they were willing to dump into getting market share...
Sega quietly and abruptly exited the hardware business. The resounding success of the Playstation 2 juggernaut was probably more responsible for the demise of SEGA Dreamcast...
How do I know? Becuase we were involved with aquiring a Sega license at the time and the whole deal dissolved when MS stepped in...there was no hint of this happening to us and we were in negotiations for licensing some game product. The Sega folks we dealt with were a bit bummed.
It's interesting to note that in a Dreamcast magazine, a UK Sega executive joked about the similarites betwen Dreamcast and XBOX... right down to the layout of the controller. But in Microsofts defense.. The XBOX is black and uses a Celeron P4, and it actually is a great console that I've spent waaaaayyyy to many hours on.
:lol:
