This! I grew up in Europe around the same time. Me and my small friend group hyped ourselves up for the Saturn. We were frustrated how Sega dropped the ball on marketing. Initially there were a few bad ads showing the mediocre Daytona USA and then nothing. Meanwhile Playstation ads were everywhere and were very well done.

As always bad console sales resulted in a vicious cycle of fewer attention from 3rd-party devs resulting in even fewer console sales.

Sega’s colossal screwup of the launch with a high price, pissing off huge retailers, and then months of no games was a total disaster.

> pissing off huge retailers

In the US Sega provided early release units to several retailers but notably skipped Best Buy, Walmart, and KB Toys. KB Toys was so mad they didn't carry Saturn stuff at all from that point.

At the time KB Toys was a pretty major retailer for video games, they'd have a presence in malls where a Babbages, EB, or Software Etc (retailers that got early release Saturns) wouldn't be found.

Sega's early release of the Saturn was one of the dumbest own-goals in video games. The Saturn was already going to have a serious struggle against the PlayStation for other reasons, fucking over retailers did absolutely nothing to help Sega.

Games media were really wined-and-dined by Sony. I remember Ultra Game Players with a Pic of someone wearing a memory card around their neck and calling it sexy. Sony really beat SEGA at their own game. As a rabbit hardcore videogamer I was miffed why anyone cared about the system since it didn't have many (any, to me) interesting games until FFVII came out. All my friends were amazed by Guardian Heroes and Dragon Force especially, and I was like, why isn't anyone playing these????