Care to give me some diffferences? Here are the similarities:

• Both had major changes to archatecture very late into the design process (SS was initally supposed to be single core. PS3 wasn't supposed to have RSX)
• Both were very expensive compared to other mainline consoles at the time (SS was $400 USD, and PS3 was $500 USD - both $100 above the next closest major competition)
• A market-changing console totally destroyed both (Playstation anhilated the Saturn, Wii destroyed the PS3)
• Both have seen very tepid 3rd party support (Saturn had almost none, PS3 is only getting multi-plats)
• Both have very bad hardware archatecture (Saturn's Dual-Core design saw inferior ports of games. Same with the PS3 but it's not quite as bad)
• Both systems' saw very little releases in their first year of release
• Both system's best markets are in Japan
• Both systems have lost their parent company billions of dollars in R&D and game failures
  
• Both systems previous iterations (Genesis and PS2) did very well for themselves
• Both systems were projected to be very strong, but took nosedives in marketshare (analysts said the Saturn would storm the gates of Nintendo and take over the lead marketshare, analysts also said that, after a slow burn, the PS3 would take over the 360's place as the #1 console). 
• Both systems relied on 1st party games since 3rd parties failed to support the system with many exclusives (same could be said of the N64 as well)
  
• Both systems saw major losses of 3rd party exclusives (Sega lost Namco and EA. Sony lost everyone but Konami).

Thats what I can think off of the top of my head.

Your turn.

No, you're pretty dead on there. The PS3 is going to lose, but with it's library it's still going to be loved. The amount of rabid fanboyism necessary to attack a statement that positive is crazy.

Yes, Sega had the whole world ahead of them. There are a lot of parallels you can draw between a company that got completely dominated sales wise for the past two generations to a company that completely dominated for two generations. Wait, there are no parallels. That's the exact opposite. Albeit Sega had a decent brand name, but they threw away their American and European success with the Saturn, having virtually no influence in those two territories (while holding a solid second in Japan). You could say that's like the PS3, and it is. But Sega never had a huge amount of credibility to begin with, whereas Sony was a giant. Again, I'd say it's more similar to the Nintendo 64. But I guess that would be a decent system to compare it to, and we wouldn't want to say something good about the PS3, now would we?

Both had great games? Look at the games on the Saturn, and compare them to those on the PS3. The similarities are almost non-existant. The Saturn didn't compare quality wise, sales wise, or even brand name wise. Its biggest games were Virtua Fighter games, which managed to sell a couple million. The PS3 had more million sellers in its first year than the Saturn had in its entire lifespan. The N64 was a horrible hardware choice for Nintendo, although I doubt it lost them any money. And I think we can both agree that the N64 lost Nintendo a lot of marketshare and respect. Sony still has a strong brand name, and like Nintendo, they can make a comeback. Sega never had a chance. Oh, and regarding your response to Steroid, unless Microsoft has managed to recoup the massive amounts they lost with the original Xbox and the early years of the 360, I'd still say they're not doing too well. Sony doing far worse, sure. But at least they had made money in the past gen.

Valkyria Chronicles alone makes the system memorable.

But then again, that was made by Sega. Sega is awesome!

disagree.. the dreamcast was a pioneer console that introduced a lot of functions into console

-online play:broadband
-microphones
-first 3D console to have motion control games
-cheap price

sega was sadly well into the hole when it launched the DC.It probably would have sold 20 million units if sega continued to sell it for another 3 years. But I guess that wasnt to be.

The ps3 is a powerful console but doesnt bring much onto the table that hasnt already been seen in terms of innovation. Plus the DC had a killer price- $199

To a lot of people who grew up around the DC launch time, the DC was seen as a powerful, innovative console ahead of its time- and it wasnt only about the graphics. DC will always be a classic cult console.

@steroid :

http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS3&reg1=Japan&cons2=PS2&reg2=Japan&cons3=DC&reg3=Japan&weeks=156

Yup the ps3 is about 500 k units ahead of the DC in japan with aligned launches.. oh and btw the DC was considered a huge FLOP in japan. It gets worse when you compare it to PS2 sales.

@Stickball, PS3 doesn't have bad Hardware, How can one say that when MGS4 , Uncharted, MS2, Killzone 2, Heavy Rain are all possible on the system. Maybe its HARDER to work on, but that doesn't make it bad Hardware.

Want to make a bet that they'll sell 2million+ PS3s in Japan alone this year?

MrStickball hit the nail on the head when he compared the PS3 to the Saturn.

Sega was the king of 3rd party games with the Genesis and pretty much lost exclusivity for them all with the saturn due to programming dificulties for the machine, lower sales than the competitors and bonehead management. Very similar situation to the ps2 to PS3 hand off...

Price...Saturn was more expensive and was losing money for Sega due to sony's push to sell PS1 at a loss. Eventually when PS1 went to 199 in nov 1996, sega couldn't afford to lower it to that so it kept it at 249 and bundled games with the system (VC, VF2, Sega Rally). Again, similar to ps3 being unable to lower the cost.

Games wise, Saturn was only given excellent games by Segas own developers (who alone could take on any other company in quaility appart from nintendo). It was given PS1 ports that a lot of the time turned out to be inferior. PS3 is in the same boat.

Now Sony has much deeper pockets than Sega did back then so I don't see we will see Sony following in Segas footsteps...but Saturn and PS3 are the most similar if comparing a PS3 to an old console.

The Sega Saturn had great games? The most gamers have a hard time to sum up 3 decent ones. Heck it even had no decent Sonic game.