Rumour has it that while the Saturn was superior on paper, it was really because rumours of the PSX caused SEGA to double up on processors, meaning more performance but harder to tool up for more parallel based development.

Funnily enough we see Sony repeat the same mistake in the PS3, doubling down on a chip architecture aimed at parallelism (cell), while most developers expressed frustration adapting.

Didn't really hurt Sony in the big picture though as much as it hurt SEGA. By the time SEGA got so much right in the Dreamcast era, they were already swimming upstream thanks to the ground they lost with the Saturn.