I'm sure in a few hours Baccanale will come in and ignore your words and ask that you post it again using the silly template.

I hope not though. I've observed what you reported as well. I dropped my res down to minimum and turned down all the graphics a few weeks ago to try to keep my cards from melting down while idling in Ul'dah waiting for the Seventh Umbral NPC to pop (95 degree weather). I was surprised that even then, the memory usage was still pretty low and I still saw only the same very limited number of NPCs.

Don't know if we can say "PS3 limitations" yet, but I'm guessing that's where we're headed.