Ok, lets' start at the beginning (sorta):

The Saturn came at a time when Sega was trying to save itself from the diasterous 32X and the unlaunched Neptune (Genesis/32X hybrid). Initially, the Saturn was supposed to be backwards compatible with Sega CD and 32XCD games, but with the Sony PSX right around the corner they had to scrap that fuctionality at the last minute.

The Saturn was supposed to be launched in September of '95, but Sony was planning on launching their PSX around the same time. Sega decided to do an early release on the Saturn with the couple of titles it had finished, most notably Virtua Fighter. The early launch meant that 3rd party devs didn't have time to get their head around the system and get titles out at launch. This, along with the $399 price tag, gave the Saturn a cool reponse in the US (Japan loved the damned thing).

The Saturn hardware was also hard to program for. It has a pair of Hitachi processors in it, but they're not in parallel AND they can't access memory at the same time. The initial games for the Saturn only used one of the processors, because the developers hadn't figured out how to program for both of them. They did eventually figure it out, but by then it was too late for the Saturn.

The other issue (which was already mentioned), was Sega of America's own fuck-ups. The fact that the PSX and N64 both launced with superior games didn't help either, but Sega's mis-management of the console pretty much killed it.

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The thing that kills me about the whole "the best games were in Japan and weren't released here" bit is that Sega, and the rest of the world, had seen it happen with another console - the PC Engine/TurboGrafx16. NEC utterly refused to bring over the best games for that console, and fucked up their deal with Capcom to release Street Fighter II in the US (allowing Nintendo to strong arm Capcom). The console died in the US because of the same things that happened with the Saturn: Lack of advertising, lack of 3rd party support (in the US), lack of good titles (all the good games were stuck in Japan), and just plain poor management.

you would think that they had learned from NEC's fuck-ups...

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