SOA was committed to the idea that the Sega Genesis had a few more years of life in it, and that the American audience was not as interested in new technology for its own sake. They were, rightly in my opinion, concerned that a change in platform would benefit the competition not them, given that they had a market-leading position at the time.
Japan was, also correctly I suspected, convinced that Hardware Supremacy was essential to maintaining their Market position. Unfortunately, internal politics at Sega Japan caused the Saturn to be overly complicated and expensive to produce. I also think Japan failed to recognize that Americans were much more price conscious and less status- conscious than the Japanese Market.
We all know who won in the end. I don't have any real evidence of this but my intuition is that Sony allowed their American arm more latitude and gave them more credibility with regard to designing the market strategy.
Sega allowed internal politics and the Japanese Centric vision to Cloud their decision making process.
And then they doubled down on their flawed strategy with Dreamcast... And the rest is history