I don't understand their handling of the Aliens license at all. First when they got it, they announced that two accomplished developers, Gearbox and Obsidian, are working on games based on the license. Aliens: Colonial Marines was officialy announced in 2006 and was supposed to come out in 2008.
It got delayed a bunch, but I thought it is related to the game's development. Then in early 2009, Sega announced a new game from a developer that hasn't put anything better than mediocre in many many years. Then they cancelled the Obsidian game. And as it sounds like, the Gearbox game is not going to come out and the Rebellion game (that looks like absolute crap) will come out, and get everyone bummed. I think it will underperform and Sega will get rid of the license.
What are those morons thinking? Cancel (of course they are not going to have two Aliens shooters back-to-back, one has to get canned) a game two years in development from an accomplished developer and start development on another similar game with an unaccomplished developer? What are they smoking?

they are smoking the leafy remains of all the good IPs theyve had over the years : )

Seems very odd that they would find the Aliens IP so important that they have to get 2 developers to develop the game seperatetly so they can compare which one is better.  In all truth Sega has become a sub part publisher and I wouldn't be surprised if they did end up bringing out the worser of the 2 games.

Genesis does what Nintendon't

" they are smoking the leafy remains of all the good IPs theyve had over the years : ) "

 @buzz_killington: Nice ID, very apt.
Rebellion made the first AvP game which was awesome so I'm looking forward to the new take without hesitation or reservation. The recent vids and images look amazing. I can't see why anyone would have a problem with this license or Rebellion being in charge of it.
The other two Aliens games I was aware of were Colonial Marines and some un-named RTS. As i understand it the announcement about the cancellation was implied to apply to both titles but really only meant the RTS (thankfully) hence the correction from Randy Pitchford. We may not have a release date yet but I've no doubt that, eventually, we'll have Colonial Marines which sounds like it'll be like Aliens the film but with Left4Dead elements thrown in (drop-in/out 4 player co-op, set pieces, episodic story-telling).
You make a lot of assumptions: Sega not releasing two shooters (despite them being from different developers and opposites in structure -multiplayer vs single player), AvP being poor and buggering gamers, Sega getting rid of one of the most successful sci-fi licences in history. You do know what they say about assumptions, right?

small boys? ...