Watch Dogs PC specs reappear, actually are still quite demanding

Car bonnet sliding requires AT LEAST 48GB of RAM.

Never mind actually playing Watch Dogs, keeping an eye on the PC system specs situation is a game in itself. Some fairly demanding ones appeared on Ubisoft’s store page last week, followed by a twitter statement from one of the developers that said specs were not final. Most people took that to mean “don’t worry, the real ones will be less demanding for all you chaps with older PCs” which … if these new ones (might just redirect you in certain regions) are to be believed, isn’t really the case.

The minimum ones have actually got higher, adding another 2GB of RAM to demand 6GB rather than 4GB. Otherwise, they look about the same. The recommended ones have become slightly more forgiving, no longer demanding an eight-core processor (a quad one will now apparently be fine.) So, the question is this: are these new specs just more store placeholders? If not, why did one of the Watch Dogs developers say the official ones would be lower?

Since Watch Dogs is also coming to PS4 and Xbox One, it’s not a surprise to see higher than usual recommended specs, but these are still somewhat higher than I’d have expected. There are also some rather weird aspects like an “Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200” card being supported, but the minimum specs still requiring 6GB of system RAM and a quad-core processor. Weird. Anyway, these are the latest ones, as dug up by NeoGaf:

MINIMUM

Supported OS: Windows Vista SP2 64bit, Windows 7 SP1 64bit, Windows 8 64bit
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.66Ghz or AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ 3.0Ghz
RAM: 6 GB
Video Card: 1024 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 (see supported list)
Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible Sound Card
This product supports 64-bit operating systems ONLY

RECOMMENDED

Processor: Core i7 3770 @ 3.5Ghz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0Ghz
RAM: 8 GB
Video Card: 2048 VRAM DirectX 11 with Shader Model 5.0 or higher (see supported list)
Sound Card: Surround Sound 5.1 capable sound card

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:

nVidia GeForce GTX460 or better, GT500, GT600, GT700 series;
AMD Radeon HD5850 or better, HD6000, HD7000, R7 and R9 series
Intel® Iris™ Pro HD 5200

One thing’s for sure, if these are accurate specs then Watch Dogs is going to be pretty much an entirely different game on the lower-powered duo of PS3 and Xbox 360. Stay tuned for a forthcoming news post where the PC specs are revised again! Or maybe not. Who knows.