Returnal just skyrocketed the PC requirements on Steam

A screenshot of the astronaut protagonist of the video game Returnal.

Screenshot: Sony / Kotaku

A friend of yours wants to build a PC to play and asks you what RAM memory should be installed. What do you answer? 16GB seems like a safe bet, right? Maybe even 8 is enough for him. Well, I’m afraid not. If your friend wants to play Returnal, he’s going to need 32GB of RAM.

Originally a PS5 exclusive, Returnal is one of many games that Sony has decided to port to PC. In fact, the game has just been listed on Steam. Resturnal is a third-person arcade game where you play a astronaut trapped in a time loop. The game was one of those that Sony used to demonstrate the power print shop of the PS5, so it was already suspected that its requirements on PC were going to be very high on the vine. The port to Windows systems was announced during the recent Game Awards. The announcement was soon followed by its debut on the Steam charts, where the game recommends a processor. six cores (eight if you use AMD), a graphics card of at least the 2000 series of GeForce or equivalent, 60GB hard drive and 32GB RAM.

To be fair, Returnal’s minimum requirements are quite a bit more affordable, but still quite high on the memory side. The game requires a minimum of quad cores, GTX 1060 graphics, and 16GB of RAM. The requirementsRequirements represent a significant increase compared to the current average, especially if we put them in context.

Back in 2015, AAA games like Fallout 4 or The Witcher 3 required a minimum of 6GB of RAM to play and a recommended amount of 8GB. Fast forward to 2019 and games like the remake de Resident Evil ask for 8GB both in its minimum and recommended requirements section. Even Cyberpunk was asking for 12GB of RAM in 2020. Just a year later, the demanding Forza Horizon 5 was asking for 16GB as the recommended amount of RAM. The same goes for Resident Evil: Village. Returnal has simply doubled that amount in a fraction of the time.

32GB of RAM as the recommended amount is inevitable, but Returnal is not exactly a PS5 smash. At best, it’s one of those games that people discover over time, but it’s not Crysis or Cyberpunk 2077. Syour requirements Exaggeratedly high, they are a real jug of cold water for those of us who dreamed of gaming PCs that did not rise more and more every year while we watched the cryptobros’ ships burn on the horizon.

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