This is just an idea...

When a large co-orp game has been made like Zelda, when it has been debugged and compiled and stuff, do the game programmers have to change the program code in anyway to get the PS2, XBOX GCUBE to read the code?

Reason I am asking is because of this quote from a book

Code:
In console programs, memory and variable managment 
is not a big issue if you have a large machine. Game console 
programming is a different matter
I was wondering why this is different?