Comment by Paianni
9 days ago
Their hardware business was doomed by 1998, FF7 and Gran Turismo had given PlayStation momentum that neither Sega or Nintendo could hope to match, but Sega was in a particularly tough spot because of years of misguided decisions.
They could have extended the Saturn's lifespan to 2000 and thrown their lot in with the PS2 after release, but it seems many people at SoJ were emotionally attached to the idea of selling consoles.
The Saturn was the bestselling Sega console in the Japanese market by a wide margin, so I’m not convinced that SoJ was the party pushing for a new console.
They wanted a console they could write a full-3D Sonic game for, the Saturn couldn't quite do such a game justice.