Crowds, Skinned mesh and memory?

hey,
We are about to implement lots of animated characters in our game and run into memory worries.
we have a system that generates different types of characters, different ethnicity, different ages, different gender, different outfits, different body types, ...
So that's a lot of unique skinned mesh renders, some quick memory debugging shows:
using 48 characters (hopefully our max) takes up more or less 900mb in memory.

Its hard to find in dept information on how to optimize animations and skinned mesh for memory, most optimizations talk about CPU/GPU.
we need to build for ps4 so we are restricted to 4g of memory. so already taking 1g for animated characters sound a bit worrisome.
If i look at Hitman Absolution on ps3 (512mb memory) my mind is blown, how did they pull this off?
Any insight / ideas about how to handle big animated crowds and memory?

 

no tips or tricks here?