Amateur Sega historian here!
Let me tell you a tale about the Sega Saturn. In retrospect, the Saturn was one of two big mistake Sega made that doomed their console business. The first being the 32x. If you don't know, the 32x was an add for the Genesis/Mega Drive that boosted the 16bit machine into a pseudo 32bit machine. It was an expensive failure with a small library and soured consumers. By the time it came out, people were anticipating not only the Saturn itself, but the Playstation and still vague Nintendo 64.
The 32x was the brainchild of Sega of America. They figured with the Genesis' high install base, a $150 add on would attract a large portion of that base - folks that either wouldn't jump on to the 5th generation right or at all, could have a budget friendly option. Sega of Japan had mixed feelings. Over there, the money was on the Saturn. Sega of Japan expected their consumers to ditch the Genesis and hop on the Saturn. The 32x would only put more work on the table. But ultimately SoJ president, Hayao Nakayama, liked what SoA came up with and greenlit the 32x.
The 32x bombed. It would start getting drastic prices drops within months. Consumers, critics and other media outlets started portraying Sega as opportunistic and anti-consumerist. Gamers weren't impressed enough with the library on offer to not keep their money and wait for the next gen.
This is where things end up splitting hard between the American and Japanese Sega branches. In Japan, Sega had never great success in the home console market. While their earliest effort, the variations of the SG-1000 did ok as a cost efficient alternative to the Famicom, the Master System and Mega Drive hit with a thud. Europe would be the sole territory were Sega were kings of the console market, until Tec Toy started producing Sega consoles in Brazil. The Genesis blew up in America, so much so that SoA had developed a strong working relationship and collaboration with SoJ. The failure of the 32x dashed that deep partnership. Sega of Japan would ensure the Saturn was the Japanese.
Throughout the Saturn's development, SoA and SoJ would but heads on what companies to partner with for hardware, and what the console's performance focuses should be. SoJ would almost always disregard suggestions from SoA. It was also a generally troubled development, with course changes and strange choices being made on the fly as they learned more about their competitors projects. Sega would be rolling out a 2D scaling beast of a machine that was difficult to program for, in a generation that would focus on 3D and triangles. They would announce a surprise early launch at E3 that would turn away many American distributers from even selling the $399 console. Sony would follow their presentation by just saying "$299." Sega would never recover in America.
But, SoJ considered the Saturn a success. Their aim was to shun international focus and make a console for Japan. It came with a launch library of titles that were all in-house developed. They covered every genre, sports, platformers, puzzle, RPG, action, etc. They would do an initiative to re-introduce Sonic to a Japanese audience that weren't really familiar with him or his games. They would do ports of their arcade classics that could finally be on par with the originals. Their internal mission statement was to finally have the #1 console in Japan. The Saturn was the #1 selling console in Japan, until the Playstation dropped. The window was short, but Sega of Japan achieved their goal.
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post-script
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The Saturn has gone on to have a strong niche of appreciators and fans. It's still a popular system for retro gaming in Japan and elsewhere - largely because of it's strong arcade ports and fantastic 2D visuals. In recent years it's also seen an uptick in the hacking and translation community - bringing some sought after game experiences into English, such as the Saturn versions of Policenauts and Grandia.
The 32x continues to have little fan fare and is still seen as bumbling mistake at best.
