With current-gen consoles now firmly on the market we’re starting to see hints of what hardware one will need in a PC in order to play the latest games. The boringly named Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor has had its system requirements announced, and they might just have a lot of people gently crying into their keyboard.

Minimum: 
OS: 64-bit: Vista, Win 7, Win 8
Processor: Intel Core i5-750, 2.67 GHz | AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 | AMD Radeon HD 6950
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Hard Drive: 25 GB available space

Recommended: 
OS: 64-bit: Win 7, Win 8
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 | AMD Radeon HD 7970
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Hard Drive: 40 GB available space

My own computer, which admittedly was built on a shoe-string budget last year,  just sits in the minimum requirements bracket, which is actually a little scary. Interestingly, though, Shadow of Mordor will also be releasing on the previous generation of consoles, and thus it’s a little surprising that PC owners won’t be able to scale the game down quite a bit.

Ah well, guess it’s time to put away some money for an upgrade. Well, if I had any money to put away.