PS3 just required a different technical solution, which is to only render items in the immediate environment of the player. That way there's a lot less demand on the RAM, despite there being hundreds or even thousands of item movements and placements across the entire game world. The only thing is that would require Bethesda to make major changes to the game engine, which would increase the cost of making the PS3 version immensely, and thereby make the game much less profitable.
Of course they could have started out by looking at the architecture of all the machines they'd be putting the game onto and design the software accordingly, rather than design the software to work well on 2 out of 3 of rhe machines and be sub-standard on the 3rd.
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix
