this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Except they released the game, in "enhanced" version, on the Switch, which is just old android phone hardware from several years back. The PS3 was totally capable of running it. The port simply failed - time constraint, investor pressures...doesn't matter. They chose to not make it better in the end when the hardware was perfectly capable of running the game.
The number of people that play a game on console is vastly underestimated by pc-primary gamers when previous titles by a developer were PC only. Skyrim on console was big. Big enough that they decided to port it to everything they could. You don't waste that kind of developer time and not expect a return...
Specifics matter in this case.
My quick review of specs shows the Switch having a 4GB of RAM to work with. Not a lot, but enough that even with the OS, you shouldn't run into too many problems.
The PS3 had 512MB of RAM. But actually, 256MB was dedicated to video, so it only had 256MB for the game itself. Oh, and the OS used a chunk of that. So, the PS3 has less than 256MB of RAM that is usable by the game. And that's where you are running into issues, especially in a game like Skyrim that is heavily reliant on memory for the amount of state the game tries to keep track of.
The point is a bit moot, in that TES got big on consoles as soon as Morrowind. Oblivion was already a console headliner.
I do think fewer people went with the PS3 version because people knew it was broken, just like Bayonetta or Red Dead Redemption. I would bet it still outsold the PC version at the time (that balance may have shifted over the years of re-releases and giveaways).