According to today's GameFaq's top 10:
I find the part I made in bold very surprising, this means the NES was supposed to have a very long lifespan, and was going to be Nintendo's only game console. This is fascinating.
Quote:
The SNES was indisputably the king of the 16-bit consoles [...] However it was in fact the last of the major 16-bit consoles to hit the market [...]
This was because (as difficult as it may be to believe) Nintendo never actually planned to release a follow up to the original NES/Famicom - at least not at that particular point in time. They envisaged the original NES to be a "standard" device, similar to a VCR or CD player, that people would use for many years. But when Sega in particular released the Mega Drive to market, it made the NES look inferior and primitive in comparison [...], so Nintendo begrudgingly decided they would need to launch a new, more powerful console themselves to stay in the game. This resulted in it hitting the market last in contrast to the other major players [...]
This was because (as difficult as it may be to believe) Nintendo never actually planned to release a follow up to the original NES/Famicom - at least not at that particular point in time. They envisaged the original NES to be a "standard" device, similar to a VCR or CD player, that people would use for many years. But when Sega in particular released the Mega Drive to market, it made the NES look inferior and primitive in comparison [...], so Nintendo begrudgingly decided they would need to launch a new, more powerful console themselves to stay in the game. This resulted in it hitting the market last in contrast to the other major players [...]
I find the part I made in bold very surprising, this means the NES was supposed to have a very long lifespan, and was going to be Nintendo's only game console. This is fascinating.