Hi. I was recently reading a game review and took a look into the system requirements for that game. And then I wonderd - why is the "minimum" part always there? Because, usually, when you try to run the specific game on a machine having those "minimal" specs (or even exceeding them a bit), you'll get bad performance anyways. So, what are they there for? Orientation on what kind of type your system should be or ...whatever? :O
From my understanding its just to stop users buying games with low grade machines, taking the games home, and then the games not working. The minimum requirments are just there as a guidline to operation of the game. Like you sate, games won't run on full spec with the minimum requirments but the game will work. It's just the producers covering there a$$es to be blunt.
Even if someone had a system right on the line of Minimum system requirements, i dont think even on low there gaming experience would be that good!
You're quite right the experiance wouldn't be good, but the game would work. It's one of the many regualations producers have to abide by for commercial sale.
I think that what they should do is list the minimum specs, so the specs would be what you would need to run the game at a smooth experience at the lowest setting.
It all depends on what you want out of the game. I'll happily play games with all the settings on low and a 640x480 resolution. It really doesnt bother me. The minimum requirements are good to have, though they usually overestimate the performance of the Voodoo cards ive found. There is no way IGI2 can be played with a Voodoo 5500! but its in the minimum requirements.
Well lots of games (if not most) list "recommended" requirements right next to the minimum, so I think the system is perfectly adequate.
I don't see an issue. The mimimum just tells you what you need at the very least to actually get the game installed and play it to some degree. Things won't be cranked and it won't be the same experience but it's just a guideline. Anyone lower than those settings pretty much need not bother.
So, to sum up - the minimum system requirements are guidelines and represent the very least to get the game going. Although, it's surely not something absolute. See, I've also found (just as most of you, most probably) that some games run even playably good on a lower machine than the minimum specs, but some run awfully bad on a machine which is a bit heavier than the minimum specs for that game. In my opinion, there are so many other factors which influence your machines performance (OS, background services, system-balance, HW components compatibility to one another) that actually one should simply try the game out and then see for him(her)-self. Well, okay, one shouldn't try to run FEAR on a 1997 machine :chk: . Thanks for your opinions so far !
They're also there so that the company doesn't have to support Doom 3 on a 486. That would be silly, but I can guarantee you that someone would've sued id if there weren't those pesky minimum requirements. Your right, there are many factors, and that may be taken into account in the minimum requirements of a game. Regardless, the developers have come to a conclusion that there's a certain level of hardware that's required to play the game.
It also depends on what game too. Some games are enjoyable with a minimum setting and some few games are barely playable with the recommended specs.
The Developers should test them out to check which the minimum spec is were the game will run ok, allthough maybe they dont do that ebcause they dont have that many computers and because everyones hardware is so different
The minimum probably factor in part of the experience the developers would have as standard. I'm sure you guys have all heard of Windows being installed on a system less than the minimum, so it's not like it can't be done. Do they test it? You bet. That's part of the testing internal and betas.
Most times minimum will work OK. I've been below (in fact, WELL below) minimum requirements before, and I was still able to atleast run it. And in most occurances, I was able to get a pretty decent 25ish frame-rate on low settings. The only time this didn't work was Oblivion - I could get a decent frame rate, but when you turn the draw distance down to the minimum, you can enter a small room and are unable to see the other side of it. So it's essentially useless. But after adding more RAM (so I was above the minimum for RAM, still quite a bit below minimum graphics and CPU), I was able to play it with a full draw distance and a playable fps.
