Honestly such a fun and inventive soundtrack. That preview of one of the new song is definitely disappointing as it's sounding more synthetic than the original did in the bass and drums (ironic since sound on the PS4 is obviously better than the original PlayStation).
It involves way more work for a composer to play live instruments due to the need for actual performance skill. Nowadays, there are tons of virtual, sample based instrument libraries where you can program in the midi and a violin, for example, will bring the part to life in a pretty convincing way. This is assuming you have really high quality software like top of the line Spitfire Audio stuff. The same still can't be said for bass guitar. We're getting closer in the virtual instrument world. Especially as physically based modeling synthesis gets better. Companies like IK Multimedia are doing great things with that right now. Yet, to replicate the Spyro soundtrack authentically you would really need a real bass player, guitar player and drummer. All of whom need to be considerably skilled. Luckily, if you're really good at programming, you can make drums sound pretty dang convincing these days. But to get a performance from programming to sound at all close to Copeland's.... Yeah right. The subtle nuance in playing in someone of his caliber is just insane. Especially on the Spyro soundtrack. Hiring someone with that skill would likely be expensive. Same with bass and guitar players.
I don't know anything about the composer for this project, but it's possible they themselves are not a drummer, bass player or guitar player. Thus they might be choosing to program synths for the bass, for example. That way they can avoid the need to have skill as a bass performer.
I don't think it has much to do with hardware limitations at all. Rather, experience with specific instruments and possibly the budget are in question here. Of course, it could have just purely been a stylistic choice. But that seems odd... It obviously isn't completely true Copeland's original score. This is what leads me to believe it's not simply a stylistic choice purely because the composer "felt like that's what served the music best."
