After years of AAA games shipping with requirements that instantly excluded a huge chunk of the Steam hardware survey, Gears of War: E-Day is heading in a different direction — and it’s a welcome sight.
The Coalition and Xbox Game Studios published the official PC system requirements for Gears of War: E-Day this week, ahead of the game’s October 6, 2026 launch on PC and Xbox Series X|S. Minimum specifications ask for an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i5-10400, 12GB of RAM, and a GPU equivalent to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 6600, or Intel Arc A580. Recommended specs step up to a Ryzen 5 5600 or Core i5-11600K, 16GB RAM, and an RTX 3060 Ti or RX 6700 XT. Both configurations require Windows 10 22H2 or newer, DirectX 12, and 130GB of available SSD storage: that last point is mandatory; a spinning hard drive is not listed as an option. The game is built entirely on Unreal Engine 5, and it’s the first mainline Gears title built without reusing legacy assets or animations from prior games, which explains both the visual ambition and that 130GB footprint. The game also arrives on Game Pass Ultimate day one.
The RTX 3060 Ti has been one of the ten most popular GPUs in Valve’s Steam hardware survey for months, and the RTX 2060 is a card from 2019 that remains widely owned. The Coalition has targeted these tiers as minimum and recommended rather than requiring the latest generation suggests genuine effort to bring the game to the PC audience. The mandatory SSD requirement is the one demand that will catch older system builders by surprise, but they’ve been mandatory in our minds for a long time now (Ed: What do you mean, you aren’t using that 10k RPM Velociraptor anymore?). The UE5 adoption also brings Lumen and Nanite into the picture, and The Coalition specifically highlighted MegaLights, Epic’s new UE5 dynamic lighting system, as a headline visual feature that should deliver the darker, more atmospheric horror-tinged aesthetics Gears has been angling toward since Gears 5.
The notable footnote on the minimum GPU list: the RTX 5050 appears alongside the RTX 2060, which is a bit of an awkward pairing since those cards are from entirely different generations. Both meet the minimum bar for DirectX 12 Ultimate support, which the game requires meaning mesh shaders, variable rate shading, and DirectX Raytracing are all in play. Older non-DX12U cards may run the game, but don’t expect a smooth experience. Set your calendar reminder for October 6 to dive in.
Discussion (11 replies)
Join Discussion →That is interesting. Itsnas if they want people to play and enjoy the game on systems that dont need a 10 year note.
130GB SSD?
They think I'm made of money over here or something?
Been noticing that kind of a sh1t a lot lately. GoW5: Ragnarok wants almost 200GB! FH6 wants 167GB. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle requires around 120GB at least. RDR2 says 150GB. Forza Motorsport 8 is 130GB. Baldur's Gate 3 is 150GB. Same for Crimson Desert and Horizon Forbidded West. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl and Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 are 140GB. This sh1t is getting ridiculous.
Textures and meshes take up a lot of space. Be careful what you ask for too. Neural texture compression might end up being a mixed bag or worse, for who knows how long.
Helldivers 2 used deduplication to significantly reduce install size on the PC port. I wonder if that is doable with some of these other games. Even E-Day was deep into development before DRAM and NAND became so expensive.
Sucks for people with slow internet. For eveyone else, they can just delete other games to make room, if they do not have enough storage space.
Give me a break. The capacity at which drives can hold these days have made developers lazy with compression and optimizations.
internet speeds play a roll. Deleting to make room for a new download is trivial for people with fast connections. I see some guys in the U.K. say they have to start the downloads before going to bed. Something I have not had to do in 20 years or more.
No, internet speeds have lead to lazy developers releasing an unfinished game and then just patching it as gamers who paid for the game play and report them.
Before Starlink a couple of years ago — either it would take a weekend+ of steady download time (with no other internet traffic), or I would just drive down to my office (55 miles) and leech company wifi - which is only 100Mb and would still take an hour or two, so I would just set up the laptop and go get dinner.
I still can't get over the title: E-day sounds like some green party fundraising event.
130 GB is not even out of the ordinary these days. There was no incentive to do anything about install sizes when ssd prices were at their lowest, but that's no longer the case.
Compression wasn't just a space saving feature but it significantly improved loading times as well. How is it that developing games takes 5 times longer, costs 10 times, and the quality is 10 times worse compared to 10 years ago? The AAA gaming industry needs a hard reset.
Stands for "Emergence Day" and it was the day the Locust Horde first emerged from underground, revealing themselves to the world and attacking humanity. I don't know if you've ever played any of the GoW games but "E-Day" is an old term. Sorry I'm a nerd and I read almost all the Gears of War novels.
Which is f*cking sad.
Agreed.
I've played 4 and 5 for a total of about an hour between the two. Let's just say I wasn't impressed.