Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Sega Saturn sold 9.26 million units worldwide. Japan accounted for 5.75 million of those, exceeding Genesis sales in that market. The United States accounted for 1.8 million, Europe for 1 million, and other territories for 530,000.
The Saturn's North American failure stemmed from several factors: a surprise launch in May 1995, four months early, which shut out key retailers including Best Buy and Walmart and left the console with only six launch titles. The high launch price compared to the PlayStation, limited third-party support, the cancellation of Sonic X-treme, and internal management conflicts between Sega of America and Sega of Japan all contributed to the console's rapid decline after the Nintendo 64 launched in late 1996.
Sonic X-treme, planned as the first fully 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game and intended to be the Saturn's flagship exclusive, was cancelled in early 1997. Development at the Sega Technical Institute was derailed when Nakayama ordered the game reworked around a different engine, forcing developers to work 16 to 20 hours a day. Access to Sonic Team's Nights into Dreams engine was revoked following an ultimatum from programmer Yuji Naka, key staff quit or fell ill, and the project collapsed.
Tom Kalinske was president and CEO of Sega of America during the Saturn's launch period. He announced the U.S. launch at the first Electronic Entertainment Expo on the 11th of May, 1995, revealing that 30,000 units had already been shipped to select retailers for immediate sale, months ahead of the planned September date. He left Sega after the 30th of September 1996, following long-standing disagreements with Sega of Japan.
The Saturn used a dual-CPU design with two Hitachi SH-2 processors running at 28.6 MHz, alongside eight processors total including two video display processors, a Motorola 68EC000 sound controller, and a dedicated Hitachi SH-1 for the CD-ROM drive. The primary difficulty was that both CPUs shared the same bus and could not access system memory simultaneously, making optimization complex. Several analysts described the Saturn as essentially a 2D system that struggled with fully 3D environments, in contrast to the PlayStation's triangle-based polygonal rendering.
According to the review aggregator GameRankings, Panzer Dragoon Saga is the most acclaimed Saturn game, praised for its cinematic presentation and unique battle system, though Sega released fewer than 20,000 retail copies in North America. Other highly rated exclusives include Nights into Dreams, Dragon Force, Guardian Heroes, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, and Shining Force III. In 2015, The Guardian described the Saturn as having perhaps the strongest lineup of 2D shooters and fighting games in console history.