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Importantly, it isn't slower.

It does use a lot more resources, but it turns out that people care a lot less about memory usage than UX speed.

VS Code has a quasi-IDE implemented for a bunch of popular languages including a debugger [1]. Sublime is a straight text editor, with limited debugging capability. Sheer usefulness beats performance, so VS Code won the editor war.

[1] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/debugging

So in other words, not the same level of functionality.

Sublime Text is an independent product from a small developer; VS Code is actively pushed and marketed by Microsoft, one of the biggest, best-known companies in the world.

That may or may not be the primary reason for the difference, but I don't think it can be ignored.