Crysis should come to the PC on November 16, taking players to the site of an Alien invasion that threatens to transform the Earth. The game is developed by Crytek, the developer behind Far Cry, a game that stretched PCs to their limits providing a spectacular outdoor battlefield. Crysis, too, promises to stretch PC hardware, but how far? Today, Electronic Arts answered that question.

At a minimum, PC owners will need a system with the following capabilities:

1. Windows XP or Vista
2. 2.8 GHz or faster processor for XP or a 3.2 GHz or faster processor for Vista
3. 1 GB of RAM for XP or 1.5 GB of RAM for Vista
4. nVidia GeForce 6800 GT or ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Video Card with at least 256 MB RAM
5. 12 GB of Hard Drive Space
6. DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card

To really enjoy Crysis in all its glory, EA recommends gamers augment the above with at least:

1. 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
2. 2 GB of RAM
3. nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS/640 or better video card

Crytek is one of the first games to really make use of the advanced graphics effects made possible by DirectX 10. Because of this, it is the strategic title of the winter season for Microsoft's Games for Windows division. Not surprisingly, there won't be a port to PS3 or Xbox 360.

As Crytek boss Cevat Yerli (a German-Turk who founded the studio with his two brothers in 1999) puts it: "We have optimized Crysis so that the game scales forward 1 to 2 years. We want to make sure that the gameplay, visuals and performance improve as technology does.”