Why do consoles have so little memory compared to classic computers?

Posted by jokoon on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by jokoon
Published on 2010-12-21T16:14:46Z Indexed on 2013/11/02 22:21 UTC
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console

I remember the Playstation having 2MB ram and 1MB graphic memory.

The Playstation 3 now has only 256MB ram and 256MB graphic memory, and I'm sure that the day the console was released, even laptop's "standard" capacity was at least 1GB.

So why do they put so little memory in their machines, while developers would benefit a lot by having more ? Or is the memory that much faster than desktops and thus more expensive ? Or is it not that much worth it for developers ? What are the Sony/XBox/Nintendo engineers thinking that seems to be the same reason ?

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