^Steve^ They dropped SEGA like a hot potato because of userbase

Wii with its wiimote is a new way to play games that by all accounts is universally fun.

Why wouldn't a professional game 'artist' not explore this new medium to it's fullest, it's all about artistic growth, particularly if your true to your art, so even if graphic power is part of that exploration, you now have motion control which appears as the next big step artistically

I have no problem with people liking the PS3 and 360, but what about us gamers who aren't finding their offerings, or pricing, attractive? Are we just supposed to sit around and wait, when there are alternatives?

Actually, for the Sega argument: Devs didn't bludgeon the Saturn and DC to death because of the userbase. As of the first year, the Saturn sold the same # of systems the PS1 did. What really made the difference was archatecture. IMO, the biggest failing of the PS2 against the GC and Xbox was in archatecture. Sony made the big flaw Sega did with the PS2, and increased it on the PS3. What's the deal? The Sega Saturn was a 2-core system. At the time (and still now), dealing with ultra-specialized CPUs and extra co-processors is a difficult task, and takes more time and money. This is why the Wii is so much cheaper to dev for - because coding on a 800mhz processor that is ultra-simple is easier to work on than a 7 core very specific SPE device like the cell is. So the devs jumped ship with the Saturn not because of the "OMGZ, It has only sold 10m units worldwide". The Genesis had that low of sales, and had devs jump on board (EA) because coding wasn't as bad on the Genesis.

^Once the userbase became smaller in relation to the PS1, SEGA was dead, it then became a self-fulfilling prophesy, 3rd parties stopped some projects because of tech issues, userbase growth/confidence slowed, 3rd parties held back even more projects, userbase growth really slowed, 3rd parties jumped, console dies.

It was the userbases slow growth after the first 6months/year for SEGA. I think the PS2 was a bitch to program at first but the userbase made it viable for developers to put the work in.

It's just business in the end, some things play against you (difficult to program) and some things go your way (rapidly expanding userbase)

One thing is for sure once 3rd parties jump ship like they did for a once big game console company like SEGA its over for that generation, and if they jump ship for the next one or two generations then a once strong console company like SEGA will find it unprofitable to continue... this particularly true if a company is making losses with their hardware sales 

The first year of third party support for the Dreamcast was not that far off any other platform, so regardless of the Saturn, they were able to get some backing, even if like the support we see for Nintendo systems it wasn't very impressive backing. As for the Dreamcast, Sega announced it was dead before PS2 could even pass its userbase in the US. The bigger problem was that after the first year on sale, the looming launches of the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube made the inevitable axing of the Dreamcast obvious. To make matters worse, despite a handful of successes, third party games weren't selling anyway, with the average one selling 70k units (similar numbers to what got the Gamecube in trouble and way off the 250k we saw from the PS2).