Did the Saturn hold out for so long only because nobody cared enough to crack it? The Saturn was stillborn as far as I can tell. Sega rushed it to market to try to recapture that early Genesis magic and discovered too late that launch titles/partners are important.
Here's what I remember from the history of it all:
The Saturn was Sega's best-selling console outside of Japan. It did terribly in America, mostly because they screwed-over retailers and developers with a surprise early release. Some retailers would straight-up not carry it, American third-party support was pulled, and this all carried forward to the Dreamcast. Sega of Japan was undermining Sega of America and there's a whole tragic story behind it. The Sega of America CEO, who helped the Genesis be successful in the US, quit over this nonsense.
As far as not hacking it, it was so easy to mod the CD drive to play back-ups (1 wire and a ribbon cable) - there probably wasn't much incentive.
