Those "ancient consoles" aren't very ancient. Dated, yes, just barely. Ancient? Hell no. Any game can be hacked at to run on older hardware. The question is just, to what length does the proverbial game need hacked to be able to run on said old hardware. Luckily, those ancient consoles are pretty capable, surprisingly. The game's ambitious sure, however a piece of software being ambitious does not inherently remove the necessities and/or possibilities to optimize.
Edit: Would also like to add that yeah the game was announced before new consoles were even heard of beyond pure speculation.
Sure but then the red would probably get raked over the coals for the game not looking exactly as good as the best quality they've shown in demos.