I agree! I'm not knocking the 32x... it was a cool idea that should have stayed an idea. I used to have a complete 32x collection and I am still facinated by what the system could have accomplished if it had been treated to some real "A" development teams.
The Sega CD wasn't that great of an idea either but at least it hosted some damn fine games. The 32x was just a distraction and a money pit. Had Sega really put ALL its muscle behind the Genesis and worked on getting the cost down on the SVP chip (Virtua Racing) then things might have turned out far differently for the Saturn and the Dreamcast.
I have to disagree with the SNES chips being wasteful... I think they were super-cool for the period and alloweded the SNES to compete for a time against the CD systems. I can't think of any SNES game with as much 3-D muscle as Virtua Racing.