The limitations are most assuredly not just in the creativity of the developers, but also in the time, expenditure and efficiency involved in development, the cooperation of the console’s dev support, and the morale of the developers that results from these. At the time, the PS2 was not as good as the Xbox in any of these qualities.
The simple fact that there have been games on both the PS2 and Xbox that are technologically more sophisticated than Munch’s Oddysee matters not. Given enough time, of course solutions would have been found, and obviously over time developers on the whole were able to make better use of consoles’ resources as better development tools and knowledge accumulate. This stands to reason, and even at the time of MO’s release Lorne acknowledged that they had only made use of a fraction of the Xbox’s capabilities.
Nothing that has been accomplished on either console since changes what understanding and resources Oddworld Inhabitants had at the time they switched to the Xbox. Microsoft gave them better dev support, higher technical capabilities, and probably a good financial incentive.
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