For instance, Masahiro Sakurai, from Smash Bros, initially explained how Rex, from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, was cut from the roster in Smash Bros Ultimate due to time constraints. At first, this was taken a bit… awkwardly, because later he added Byleth from Fire Emblem Three Houses, when that game was in development.
However, when Pyra and Mythra were added, also from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Sakurai explained how it wasn’t possible to have Rex playable with a swappable Blade, due to the Switch’s hardware limitations.
Here’s what I understood later on: if Sakurai stated that “Rex wasn’t added due to hardware limitations”, when Smash Bros Ultimate was released in late 2018, less than 2 years in the Switch’s lifespan, that… wouldn’t have been good publicity ^^;
So yeah, was there a developer’s excuse/justification that you only understood later?
Console hardware limitations were always a big problem. I can remember releasing a game for the ps3 and xb360 during their regular lifecycle, and it was extremely difficult to get everything to fit in 512mb of ram… Ram was always the hard one with those two.
Consoles are always extremely underpowered. Games made for them just have exact requirements to meet, so they seem “fine”. Working with consoles made me never want another one, heh. Giving up too much from ports because of arbitrary hardware limitations.