In short video gaming in the United States was basically dead when the NES was released and the US model was designed to not resemble the ATARI.

Video game revenue crashed 97% in 1983, mainly because there were too many systems on the market and none of them had compatible cartridges. Also, the quality of the games were really low because any person could release 3rd party software. Arcades were still a huge force in the US and the home consoles looked terrible in comparison.

Meanwhile, Nintendo was releasing the Famicom in Japan and wanted to expand into the US. Test sales stunk. So they redesigned the box to look like a VCR or betamax instead of an ATARI. They took marketing steps like renaming it as an "Entertainment System" instead of a game console.

NES succeeded because they released high quality games with very little bugs and (for the day) very good graphics. They took severe licensing control over the software to ensure that quality.

The wikipedia article is extremely thorough on this topic, I'd suggest a quick read.