I'll give you a simple answer OP, the original game had open maps, and by open i mean, no zones. why do you think we have zones now? and that's not all, the game has a big lack of open world content because more players and events occurring in the open world would make a PS3 explode. And going back to beta, when we asked for more emotes and things like other mounts as companions, SE said no because memory limitations... well which memory? the memory saved in the servers for a few animations is not a problem, a PC doesn't have memory limitations unless it's too old, and the new generation of consoles are just like PCs. And last, SE already said they will drop support for ps3 in the future, most likely with the second expansion.

So yes, PS3 can hold the game back, while the limitations we have now are not directly caused by the ps3, but by a very short time to rebuild and launch the game, it will irremediably hold our possibilities from now.