Spore System Requirements

There has been no word really as of yet what the minimum system requirements of Spore will be.  Most of us can only assume, and after seeing Will Wright's joke specifications we can only hope that it will be much less.  Here are the prototype front and back covers he made for his game which he had initially named SimEverything.

After some research by looking at some of the most popular games of today, I came up with the following specifications.  The 3D engine of Spore may be a brand new one, but its gameplay may not be more demanding on the computer than games such as the Sims 2 or World of WarCraft.  Also, having the Internet is not required but for a full Spore experience it is recommended.  I have increased some specifications due to Spore being cutting edge, but not by much so that the game can continue being mainstream. 

What I think the minimum system requirements should be:

• OS: Windows 2000, XP, ME or Vista.
• 1 GHz processor or better.  Current popular games require at least 800MHz.
• 512 MB of RAM or more.
• 64 MB 3D graphics card. Current popular games require at least 32 MB, but the more video memory the better!
• At least 6 GB of hard drive space.

Happy Easter everyone!

Comments

[Ishist]

Based on the current state of the art in procedural programming, I'd expect that Spore will require far far less than 6Gb of HD space. Unless they really do a horrible job, they'll probably be able to get it into under 200 Mb. Possibly far less.

With 6Gb, you could probably have every life form of any species be unique.

[Cytra]

I agree that it would take much less than 6GB hard drive. World of WarCraft used 6GB in their minimum system requirements and I went with that. However, I looked in my programs today and noticed that it only took rougly 3GB of hard drive space.

There are a lot of data files, images, textures and other types of content and code. I believe this is what will take up most of the space. Downloading other creatures won't take up that much, but we also don't know exactly how this is going to work. Since downloading creature specs doesn't take up much space, does this mean we will be downloading many at a time into our computer to be picked from? Will we be downloading all the designs for our tastes every time we log in? And will there be a purging system to delete all the information that we don't use? We don't have the answers to these questions yet...

[Fobok]

Remember, there won't be a lot of data files taking up the space. He went on for a good while in his 2005 speech on how games were using more and more data, and that procedural content was a way to combat that. 6 gigs is for a game without procedural content. He's expecting to fit a database of thousands of creatures, plants, buildings, and so on onto a single CD.

However, I do think, also because of the procedural animation, the processor and RAM requirements will probably be higher. I'm guessing (figuring they want to keep a large market, yet still require a lot of processing for the game) 1 Gb RAM and a 1.5 GHZ processor.

[anonymous]

I disagree that most popular games require at least 800 mhz of speed. most games require at least 2.5 gigahertz right now. and also, I think that the minimum requirement would be about 2.4 or 2.8 for the minimum gigahertz.

[Tuvoc]

I just hope that Spore won't be too big for my PC. I only have a laptop, and it's a dual-core. But I'm not sure if the universe can be put into it.

[Matthew Pearse]

Well this cruel joke on us fine harted people is fake...i cheked time and time again...and as it turns out (oviusly) nearly everything on that list is a complete load of bull. TRUST ME! I'D KNOW!
me dads an expert on everyting complicated to do wid computers XD XD XD XD

[Jelmoh]

I think sys reqs are far higher than you expect... 64 mb graph memory? more like 128mb.
Processor will be around 2.4Ghz and memory around 1gb... minimum system requirements... I think it's closer to this than any of your guesses...

[Dakota]

In my opinion it couldn't be bigger than MED2 Total War, I hope so at least.

[Joe]

you all got to remember this blog was posted in 2006.

And there wern't much high powered graphical engines back then.

From the screen shots, the graphics look awersome, but i don't think it will need such a high end system. The graphics look great but their cartoonarised and stuff (if you know what i mean) so I'm guessing atleast a 125mb graphics card (maybemore).

As for processing power, 1.5ghz or more probably because its going to have lots of stuff going on in the back ground.
Ram i sa around 1 to 2 GB and all the other stuff i personally do not know.

I really hope the processing power isn;t too high because i only have a 1.4ghz processer on my laptop

[Lukex115]

My graphics card is the dreaded "Intel(R)82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset". It is known to have problems with quite a few games and programs. Can anyone tell me if its made my computer incompatible with this awesome game also?

[Chris Davis]

The MINIMUM requirements have finally been released (no word yet on how resolution affects these specs, so one can only guess that these are at 1024 by 768):

System Requirements:

WINDOWS XP
- 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- 512 MB RAM
- A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
- At least 6 GB of hard drive space

WINDOWS VISTA
- 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
- 768 MB RAM
- A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
- At least 6 GB of hard drive space

MAC OS X
- Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
- Intel Core Duo Processor
- 1024 MB RAM
- ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
- At least 4.7GB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for creations.