The attention the 6502 get is just because of history. The advantage the 6502 had was that it was cheap--on every other axis the 6502 sucked.
The 6800 (from 1974) could have been competitive with the 6502, but (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809#6800_and_6502):
“The 6800 was initially sold at $360 in single-unit quantities, but had been lowered to $295. The 6502 was introduced at $25, and Motorola immediately reduced the 6800 to $125. It remained uncompetitive and sales prospects dimmed. The introduction of the Micralign to Motorola's lines allowed further reductions and by 1981 the price of the then-current 6800P was slightly less than the equivalent 6502, at least in single-unit quantities. By that point, however, the 6502 had sold tens of millions of units and the 6800 had been largely forgotten.”
On the other side of the cpu wars, all those 8080 machines moving on the Z80s got to keep all their binary software, which happened again for IBM PCs and clones as those evolved.
The 6800 was expensive versus the 6502--almost 10x (6502 was $25 when the 6800 was $175 which was already reduced from $360)!