Here's my take on it. Up until recently, the bigger bikes were slack, beefy and built to take big hits and be comfortably in the air. The longer travel forks had thicker stanchions and the longer travel shocks were bigger than their weight weenie race counterparts.
100mm XC bikes had a 71° HA, 32mm stanchions on sub 2kg frames, 100mm stem and space for a 2.25" tyre. Not comfortable in the air unless you are Nino Schurter.
Enduro/AM, 65° HA, 36mm stanchions, beefy frames, short stem and big tyres. Made for fun, jumps, ploughing rock gardens and going fast on rough stuff.
There is a bit if a change there with some of the models resembling a short travel enduro bike now, the SC Tallboy definitely springs to mind. The Evil Following I owned was another and the Transition Spur I have been watching a few videos on lately. 66°HA, 120mm front and rear, room for 2.4 or bigger tyres, Fox 34's or SID'S with the 35mm stanchions ect.
These short travel bikes will be as comfortable ripping trails and jumping as their full enduro counterparts but even with the quailty suspension, setting them up with more pressure or token for bigger hits will take away from the ride quality of the shorter travel bike. You will hit the limits on stuff with more gnarl on the shorter bike than with the 160mm bike.
The trade off is, are you pedalling a 160mm bike around trails that are more than capable on a standard XC bike and would absolutely rip on a slack shorter travel bike like the Following or Spur.