Sure it can, it happens all the time in fact. Many console development kits have more memory available for development purposes that isn't available on retail u

Sure it can, it happens all the time in fact. Many console development kits have more memory available for development purposes that isn't available on retail units. This is hugely beneficial in development because it means you can actually run a build that has asserts enabled, or you can use special memory allocators that pad allocations for debugging, etc. I have seen, and been involved with, the mad scrambles to bring memory footprint down as a project edges toward completion. It's not as fatal to blow your memory budgets on PC as it is on a console but if you're trying to hit a certain memory footprint so that the game is playable on the minspec machines defined by your publisher then it could very well be an issue.