OS X system requirements
System requirements for OS X Lion and Mac OS X v10.6
Summary
Learn the system requirements for OS X Lion and Mac OS X v10.6.
Products Affected
Mac OS X 10.6, OS X Lion
OS X Lion system requirements
To use Lion, make sure your computer has the following:
An Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor
Mac OS X v10.6.6 or later to install via the Mac App Store (v10.6.8 recommended); you can install without Mac OS X v10.6 by using an OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive, available on the Apple Online Store
7 GB of available disk space
2 GB of RAM
If your Mac does not meet these requirements, you will need to upgrade your Mac before installing Lion.
Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard system requirements
To install Snow Leopard for the first time, you must have a Mac with:
An Intel processor
An internal or external DVD drive, or DVD or CD Sharing
At least 1 GB of RAM (additional RAM is recommended)
A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
At least 5 GB of disk space available, or 7 GB of disk space if you install the developer tools
I got this from Apple's support site and your machine meets these requirements, so I am confused as to why 10.6.8 couldn't be installed unless there was a problem with the installation in the first place or if you happened to have a PowerPC only version of it(which I don't think even exists).