The 8GB of GDDR5 RAM in the PlayStation 4 is a large part of what sets that console apart and makes it the hardware beast that it is. So it’s probably a bit of a shock for you to know that Sony was originally planning to include only 4GB of RAM in the console- and the Knack developers are probably at least part of the reason why they decided to bump that RAM up to the current 8GB.
Accorsding to Knack lead programmer Tsuyoshi Murakami, Sony had originally put in only 4GB of RAM; however, the Knack development team was on the hardware advisory board, and they felt they needed 8GB instead of 4GB. So they told Sony that, who promptly bumped up the specs.
It’s fascinating to think of what might have been had the PS4 only had 4GB, though- half the RAM of the Xbox One? The current generation landscape would have looked extremely different from how it looks today, particularly with regards to multiplatform games.
[Inside Games, with translation provided by DualShockers]