It's because with the beginning of every generation of consoles, the devs aren't used to coding for the new hardware, as consoles have always had exotic architectures. This generation, the consoles are both x86 based, meaning programming techniques aren't much different from PC game development (ie: no cell processor to learn). No excuses this time.
That's a load of bollocks, likely coming from someone who's never coded anything at all and/or knows very little about how it's done.
Console games have been programmed in standardized languages, most notably C and C++, on pre-made SDK's since the fifth generation, meaning for the last 16-17 years. With the rise of DirectX and OpenGL, customized graphics libraries became a thing of the past as well.
"Exotic architectures" had
f*ck-all to do with the actual process of programming a video game, platform-specific functionality was always given appropriate wrappers to avoid using microcode at all costs and
"finding out about them" was a matter of studying a couple examples and reading through the SDK's manual to learn some key functions and addresses - not rocket science. The only
"exotic-ness" of console development comes from using
"console SDK's" which have
"console function sets", but this has nothing to do with the architecture used.
The only instances when microcode
was used was when the coders wanted to squeeze some extra performance or use some hardware functionality that the makers of the SDK didn't think of, this is the case with Rareware's Nintendo 64 games. Sony took it a little too far with the CELL by pretty much forcing coders to write microcode for SPE's. They did not respond favorably, mostly because
they never had to do this before and the SDK was gradually being updated to move away from this approach or simplify it which brought
better games in the long run.
A change in the architecture is not changing anything at all - x86_64 can also accept microcode and
will accept microcode if the developers see fit to use it. You're talking as if consoles were some weird unicorns in comparison to other devices when they really aren't. The use of a PC-like architecture doesn't change the status quo - Mac coders didn't use microcode and yet they coded for computers based on the
"exotic" PowerPC architecture, smartphone coders didn't
(and don't) use microcode very often and yet they coded for devices based on
"exotic" MIPS and ARM chips. On the other end of the spectrum we have NO$GBA which is a DS emulator written almost exclusively in x86 Assembly.
Console coders do because console coders have to keep up with the times without the option to upgrade the hardware.
Moreover, both the XBox One's and the PlayStation 4's APU's have built-in customized silicon just like any other console does and these custom CPU components will result in custom features, differentiating the systems from the PC standard. All that changed was the architecture, not the approach.
