Battlefield 4 PC Alpha Specs Revealed; No Windows 8 Support

DICE’s latest entry in the Battlefield series has already generated large amounts of interest from the gaming community starting with its visually stunning gameplay reveal at GDC. Delivering on what series fans wanted to see, Battlefield 4 served as the highlight of EA’s press conference at E3 2013 with new details on its multiplayer mode and a 64-player LAN setup that offered a tantalizing glimpse at what will offered in the gameplay’s multiplayer modes.

The media reveal and multiplayer demo, despite some glitches, uncovered a slew of details on the game’s multiplayer mode, including expanded customization options such as dual optics borrowed from fellow EA title Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and the Commander Mode from previous Battlefield titles. These new details promise a deeper multiplayer experience set to surpass Battlefield 3, and possibly hints what features might be included in the future Star Wars: Battlefrontgame, but other information concerning BF4′s Alpha trial and information on stats and unlocks has also surfaced.

For PC gamers looking to get in on the next-gen action and wondering what sort of hardware they’ll need to meet or exceed the requirements of the updated Frostbite 3 engine, MP1st posted a screenshot of the Alpha invite which lists the recommended system requirements as follows:

Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7 64-bit only
Windows 8 and 32-bit not supported.
DirectX 10 or DirectX 11 GPU with 1+ GB of RAM
DirectX 11 highly recommended
25GB Free HDD space required
Latest version of Origin

Though these are not necessarily reflective of the requirements of the final build of the game they do stand out for two significant reasons; the lack of support for Windows 8, and the lack of support for anyone still running a 32-bit operating system. Whether this changes for the final release build we’ll have to wait and see, but for interested players who’ve made the transition from Windows 7 to 8, they may want to keep their 7 discs on hand just in case.

For anyone wanting in on the Alpha trial for Battlefield 4, if they haven’t received an invitation already then it’s too late to join in on the two-week run. All invitations to the single Alpha trial have already been sent out. The Alpha is expected to last about two weeks and gamers wanting more information will have to wait and hear from those lucky few who were selected to participate. For everyone else, the beta will be up next and those who pre-ordered MoH: Warfighter and who pre-order BF4 already have guaranteed access.

The other bit of intriguing news that comes from a conversation MP1st had with Karl-Magnus Troedsson, the GM and Vice-President of DICE in response to a question regarding the potential for player stats and unlocks to carry over from current to next-gen consoles, since it’ll release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 before the PS4 and Xbox One even come out. Troedsson confirmed that the ability to carry over unlocks from current systems to next-gen ones is being “discussed” but that “we have to wait and see how first-parties see this.”

While far from a definitive answer it does offers players who are planning on purchasing the game for their current consoles and later upgrade to the next generation systems hope that they can carry over their hours of hard work to the new system with them. If DICE does end up finding a way of making this happen, than perhaps that could pave the way for other titles in the future to permit a crossover of stats and unlocks between multiple platforms, something that was lacking on Origin for BF3 players who had PC and console versions.