Indiana Jones & The Great Circle’s Specs Prove AAA Gaming Is Becoming Unattainable For PC Hallie Frederick | usagoldmines.com

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks to launch on both Xbox Series X/S and PC day one, being available on Game Pass on release. Surprisingly, a PlayStation 5 port has already been announced, looking to release in the first half of 2025, and it seems like Xbox wants to get its fingers in as many pies as possible to give Dr. Jones the best chance at success in his latest foray into gaming. Still, if reaching as many people as possible is the objective with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, it could face a problem plaguing other AAA titles.

Xbox exclusives have been launching on PC day one for some time now, although the news that they are also coming to the PlayStation 5, despite PlayStation exclusives seemingly making no effort to come to Xbox, has been met with some surprise. It seems as though Xbox is trying to remove exclusives from modern gaming, and PlayStation is slowly following suit with its PC ports, but the PC versions might be unattainable for a decent fraction of the player base. It could hamper the broad appeal that AAA games have always tried to aim for.

Indiana Jones & The Great Circle Requires A Powerful Gaming Rig

Its PC Spec Follows A Frightening Trend Of PC Spec Inflation

Bethesda has recently put Indiana Jones and the Great Circle‘s PC requirements on its website, and there are a few things to note when looking at them. For one, the requirements have been split, with half focusing on full ray tracing requirements while the other half are simply labeled standard rendering requirements. Anything with ray tracing has high PC requirements as a rule, yet The Great Circle is asking for some of the meanest PCs around, with its best possible settings asking for RTX 4090s, which most can only dream of owning.

Most players won’t bother looking at the ultra PC requirements for ray tracing, and they probably shouldn’t, since the standard rendering requirements are what is required to actually run the game. That being said, the minimum required spec for The Great Circle is nothing to sniff at, requiring an RTX 2060 Super, which is needed just to be able to run the game on low graphics settings. If players want to be confident in their rig’s ability to run the game, they should look at the recommended specs, requiring a 3080Ti and 32GB of RAM.

These specs are incredibly high and seem to be the price players pay for high graphical fidelity. Indiana Jones and The Great Circle is a great looking game, and the ray tracing is likely responsible for this in the many trailers, but it seems that a powerful rig is required to get it running. The PC version is 120GB in size, compared to the roughly 87GB that the Xbox version takes up, which also shows that The Great Circle is following a worrying trend of games not sacrificing storage space in favor of their visuals.

More AAA Games Require Expensive Rigs To Run

Games Are Leaning On Frame Generation To Compensate

Indiana Jones and The Great Circle isn’t the only modern title asking for immense rigs to run it. Monster Hunter Wilds came under fire for its PC requirements, considering that DLSS and frame generation were required to get 60FPS with its recommended specs for its beta. Despite the requirements being significantly lower than The Great Circle‘s, the reliance on frame generation in particular to make up for how demanding modern AAA games are compared to PCs that players actually have is worrying. It almost feels like the graphical fidelity of these games isn’t worth the price.

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Another title with immense PC requirements at the time was Black Myth: Wukong, and according to its Steam page, the requirements are still significantly lower than Indiana Jones and the Great Circle‘s despite only coming out in August. The jump from Wukong to The Great Circle presents a worrying picture of what feels like a PC spec arms race, and games are constantly requiring better parts at an increasing rate. It doesn’t help that PC parts are not getting cheaper either; the RTX 4090 was released at $1,599, but the price went up after release.

One of the worst parts about the increasing rate at which games require better PC parts is that these games aren’t really getting better looking either. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle does look great, especially with its ray tracing, yet the standard version doesn’t blow away something like Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 1 (the remake version that ended up on PC) or Black Myth: Wukong. Still, it requires a more powerful PC than both, and it is expected that another AAA game down the line will see another jump in PC requirements without much reward.

PC Gamers Are Being Priced Out Of AAA Gaming

The Recent Quality Of AAA Games Isn’t Helping Either

Although Indiana Jones and the Great Circle looks to be an improvement on other recent AAA titles, like Star Wars: Outlaws, the ever-demanding PC requirements will price some players out who can’t afford to upgrade from their current rigs. There have been some great AAA titles of late, but the problem lies with their consistency, and the standard $70 price of AAA games isn’t inviting either. PC players could turn to cheaper and easier-to-run indie games instead, leaving the AAA scene to the console players.

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Indiana Jones And The Great Circle Breaks One Annoying Trend In The Perfect Way

Among the many amazing things Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is setting out to do, it’s also fixing one of gaming’s most frustrating trends.

Yes, there are some lucky PC players who have rigs that can easily run recent AAA games, although ray tracing might push even NASA-worthy devices, but the average user isn’t powering up an RTX 4090-powered rig. According to a survey for November 2024 on Steam, the most popular GPU is the RTX 3060, which is significantly worse than The Great Circle‘s recommended RTX 3080Ti and comparable, if slightly worse, than the minimum RTX 2060 Super. This is according to UserBenchmark, and is a worrying sign for PC players going forward.

Putting all the effort into bringing these AAA games to PC might not provide the profit that Xbox and PlayStation expect if the PC requirements keep inflating at such a rapid rate. The average Steam user, with an RTX 3060, probably can’t run Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with standard rendering, let alone think about ray tracing. PC players are already being priced out of the AAA market and if prices for PC parts continue to rise, fewer and fewer will be able to go on AAA adventures once their current rigs can no longer keep up.

Sources: Bethesda, Steam (1, 2), UserBenchmark

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a first-person action-adventure game developed by the creative team at MachineGames. Set in 1937 between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade, players take on the role of the titular globe-trotting adventurer/archaeology professor Dr. Indiana Jones, as he races across the world to stop a dangerous organization from utilizing the power of the mystical Great Circle.

Released

December 9, 2024

Developer(s)

MachineGames

Engine

id Tech 7

ESRB

N/A

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