In hindsight, Sega's best play with the Saturn would have been to agree to pay for 100% of Final Fantasy 7's budget and a fat money hat on top of that.
The Saturn was outselling the Playstation 1 in Japan in those earlier days, they should've just thrown everything at making a deal with Squaresoft that they couldn't possibly say no to the second they sensed any dissent with the Nintendo-Square relationship.