Because bigger is better for marketing. The goal was to get sprite sizes as close to arcade as possible. The console manufacturers competed with arcades back th

Because bigger is better for marketing. The goal was to get sprite sizes as close to arcade as possible. The console manufacturers competed with arcades back then and arcade games always looked better when the bit wars were going. Most systems weren’t even capable of their claim and had to add processors together to get the total up (jaguar for example). Simpler times. 80/90s were about big. Also important to remember that most people didn’t know what a megabyte was.