PlayStation 4 developers are limited to using 4.5GBs to develop their games, claims a new report.

Digital Foundry says that, according to internal Sony documentation leaked via a 'development source', the console reserves up to 3.5GBs (of its 8GBs) of RAM for the operating system, leaving developers 4.5GBs to play with.

Citing 'other sources close to Sony', however, the report says this benchmark can be "flexible" by up to 1GB, meaning developers can request access to a full 5.5GBs of RAM, but only if the PS4's operating system processes are streamlined enough to accommodate the drop in its allocation.

PS4 dev kits apparently allow developers to switch between the two memory profiles manually using a 'Game Memory Budget Mode' option ('Normal' being 4.5GBs, and 'Large' being 5.5GBs), but its said that developers are only guaranteed a budget of 4.5GBs.

Source: CVG