Returnal has long been one of the few exclusive titles released for the PS5. Now the acclaimed game is also available for PC. However, the system requirements are quite demanding. You can find all the information about it in this article.
As one of the first PS5 exclusive titles, Returnal was able to provide a small taste of what the PS5 is graphically capable of. The roguelite shooter is not only impressive due to its great visuals and creepy atmosphere but also offers a wonderfully told story that aims to captivate you in front of the screen despite the extremely high level of difficulty.
This spring, the game will be released on Steam. Why you probably still won’t be able to play it, you can find out in this article.
These are the system requirements you need if you want to play Returnal on PC
Sony announced last week at the Game Awards that the formerly PS5-exclusive Returnal will soon also be available for PC – like several other Sony games have in the past and will in the near future (via Twitter). However, so far, only spring 2023 has been mentioned as the release date.
The game developed by Housemarque didn’t experience the hype like other Sony exclusives, such as Spider-Man, The Last of Us, or Horizon, but it is still a really good game. It’s no wonder that Returnal has a Metacritic score of 86 points (via Metacritic).
Here you can watch the announcement trailer of Returnal on PC:
So it sounds naturally great at first that soon even more players can enjoy this previous hidden gem. However, it is doubtful that really many gamers will ultimately be able to play Returnal on their PC. The reason is the ridiculously absurd system requirements of the title (via Steam).
What kind of performance does your PC need to play the game? To play Returnal with the recommended system requirements, your PC needs:
Recommended:
| Operating System: | Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903) |
| Processor: | Intel i7-8700 (6 core 3.7 GHz) AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (8 core 3.7 GHz) |
| Memory: | 32 GB RAM |
| Graphics: | NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER (8 GB) AMD RX 6700 XT (12 GB) |
| Storage Space: | 60 GB available storage space |
You heard it right. To play Returnal on the recommended settings, you need a whopping 32 GB of RAM.
That a game demands so much RAM is not only new but also somewhat surprising in the case of Returnal.
The PS5 has 16 GB of RAM, which is used for both system memory and VRAM. That a PC needs fundamentally 32 GB of system memory and additionally the 8 – 16 GB of VRAM of a modern graphics card is astonishing.
A plausible explanation could be that Returnal benefits from the enormous fast memory and the direct access of the GPU to the SSD on the PS5. Although an NVMe SSD in a PC comes close, the PS5’s SSD is still faster. To mimic this incredibly fast SSD of the PS5, the game will likely load more assets into RAM instead.
In the future, Windows’ DirectStorage API should help with this, allowing even highly detailed game worlds to be loaded faster than ever before. This works by splitting the assets into multiple stacks, so that multiple processing requests can occur at once.
The minimum requirements of Returnal are logically somewhat lower but still require 16 GB of RAM from you.
| Operating System: | Windows 10 64-bit (version 1903) |
| Processor: | Intel Core i5-6400 (4 core 2.7GHz) AMD Ryzen 5 1500X (4 core 3.5GHz) |
| Memory: | 16 GB RAM |
| Graphics: | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB) AMD Radeon RX 580 (8 GB) |
| Storage Space: | 60 GB available storage space |
Other new games don’t even come close to these levels
To give an idea of how unusual the enormous requirements for RAM are: not even the Microsoft Flight Simulator demands so much RAM. For the minimum requirements, 8 GB of RAM is needed, and for the recommended 16 GB. And other games with high graphical demands, such as Cyberpunk 2077, A Plague Tale: Requiem, or Dying Light 2, do not require more than 16 GB of RAM.
A game that at least comes somewhat close to the levels of Returnal is the upcoming Dead Space remake set to release in January. Both for the minimum and recommended system requirements, the sci-fi shooter demands 16 GB of RAM (via Steam).
And even Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered only require 32 GB of RAM if DLSS and the highest ray tracing settings are activated.
What do you think about the high system requirements of Returnal? Do you believe that this will be a one-time case in the near future, or do you think we will soon see many more games with such requirements? Do you still plan to play Returnal on PC?
Feel free to let us know in the comments!
