skeletonbow: While Windows 7 usage still has approx 24% of the market in June 2019, I'm willing to bet that this number drops staggeringly between now and April 16, 2020. I'd be rather surprised if Windows 7+8.x usage is higher than 5% total on Steam hardware survey when the game is actually released. I also think that Microsoft is going to do things to try to force people to upgrade to Windows 10, just like they did when Windows 10 was originally released, and that there's even a possibility they may incentivize people with a promotion for a free Windows 10 upgrade for a week or month or whatever. May or may not happen, but Microsoft has done it before so it is certainly plausible.

skeletonbow: There is a big difference between selling games designed for Windows XP/7/8 now, even though those OSs are no longer supported by Microsoft, and releasing a brand new game after the support from Microsoft for those operating systems has already ended.

Laterali: I notice one of the "goodies" for pre=ordering is a discount in the CDPR Merch store, which is useless for anyone outside of Europe since they don't ship outside of it. Kind of a weird thing to offer when a good portion of users won't be able to make use of it.

skeletonbow: We don't know yet what the 3rd gen Threadripper will provide, but we do know the differences between 2nd gen Threadripper and its Ryzen cousins and can draw educated speculation from that. The Threadripper CPUs have double the memory bandwidth, which increases performance of memory bound applications, higher PCIE lane count which accommodates more hardware, faster inter core communications from what I recall to name a few things.

Despite rampant Internet rumours that Threadripper was dead, AMD has confirmed that Threadripper is not dead and that there will be Zen 2 based Threadripper CPUs in the future. They haven't committed to any timelines so we'll have to wait and find out.

I have time on my side as I'm in no hurry to purchase anything. Eager yes, but not rushed. Rumours are that Threadripper gen 3 will be available in 16, 24, 32 and 64 core parts however none of that is likely to be confirmed any time soon. I only care about 16 core and it'll almost certainly have that however. In the end what matters is performance and features to price value compared with other options and their pros and cons. Ryzen 9 chips are looking pretty good right now, but I think it'll be worth waiting to see what they do with the Threadripper first.

skeletonbow: It's speculation based on things the lead engine developer of Witcher 3 said previously about the next generation graphics APIs and why they weren't used in The Witcher 3. He's no longer at CDPR for several years now, however if I'm going to speculate about something then I'm going to speculate on the most likely scenario that is going to happen. There is risk of being wrong no matter how one speculates, but unless CDPR has stated or states outright in the future that the game is based on Vulkan under the hood, I'm going to speculate that it uses DirectX 12 because the vast majority of AAA games that are embracing and using the next generation graphics APIs are choosing to use DirectX 12.

For the record however, I am highly in favour of Vulkan and hope that my speculation is 100% wrong and that CDPR chose to use Vulkan instead, because both DX12 and Vulkan are comparable in performance and feature set, but DX12 is a walled garden of Microsoft vendor lockin, and Vulkan opens up the possibility of easy porting of the game cross platform if they decide to do so in the future.

So I think it makes more sense for any game company to use Vulkan, but by observing what game companies are actually doing, DirectX 12 seems more likely to me. I hope I lose the bet, it would make me much happier than if I am right.

skeletonbow: Yep, it wouldn't make much sense for any existing games on the market to be DX12 exclusive because according of the latest Steam Hardware Survey, Windows 10 only makes up 67.84% of the market in terms of operating system use amongst Steam gamers. Windows 7 64bit usage is 23.43%, and other versions of Windows account for about 4.5% approximately, so making a game Windows 10 exclusive would throw away 1/3 of the potential customers for a game for any game released to date.

But we're talking about a game that isn't coming out until mid-April 2020, a full 4 months after Microsoft ends support for Windows 7, and with the knowledge that the majority of games or other piece of software out there that launches officially after the support for a Microsoft operating system ends, almost never support previous versions of the now obsolete operating system. The only reason they'd need to support DX11 is if they planned to support older versions of Windows, or video hardware that isn't DX12 compatible, and based on what we do know so far I don't think they do plan to support older OS releases or hardware, nor that it makes much business sense for them to do so.

While Windows 7 usage still has approx 24% of the market in June 2019, I'm willing to bet that this number drops staggeringly between now and April 16, 2020. I'd be rather surprised if Windows 7+8.x usage is higher than 5% total on Steam hardware survey when the game is actually released. I also think that Microsoft is going to do things to try to force people to upgrade to Windows 10, just like they did when Windows 10 was originally released, and that there's even a possibility they may incentivize people with a promotion for a free Windows 10 upgrade for a week or month or whatever. May or may not happen, but Microsoft has done it before so it is certainly plausible.

Aside from that though, most of the new hardware that has come out in the last 3 years or so does not have proper support available for older versions of Windows, such as scheduler updates to handle new CPU module topologies etc. so if people want to use new hardware properly they need to be already running Windows 10, and that's only going to continue in the next year also.

I absolutely and categorically agree with you about Vulkan. Nothing could please me more than to find out the game uses Vulkan, even if they do not plan to support any other operating systems or platforms. It'd be a big win even just on Windows 10 IMHO, especially for AMD Radeon users.

skeletonbow: I don't think it's a mistake at all. I think that it is information that they do in fact know already and so they're providing that detail to people that they do know, and not providing more details for the stuff that is not yet known 100% such as the exact hardware minimum and recommended requirements. If they weren't absolutely sure what operating systems they planned to support then they probably wouldn't have listed that either. But if they didn't know that then they probably would not have put the game up for pre-order yet either.

skeletonbow: I agree, Vulkan is overall the better choice as both it and DX12 are originally based on AMD Mantle, but Vulkan is cross platform open design not controlled by one company, and DX12 is proprietary closed design dominated with vendor lockin from Microsoft. Both have similar performance and feature characteristics, but one has more promise on many more devices (Vulkan). I hope very much that the decision makers at CDPR recognize that and decided to go with Vulkan, but I can't find it within me to bet money that they have chosen to go with it. I hope to find out that they did though.

skeletonbow: True answer: Whenever CDPR finishes the game and optimizes it enough to predict what the minimum and recommended requirements are and feel confident enough to post it publicly and on the store pages.

Speculative answer: They announced the system specs for The Witcher 3 in January 2015, with the game being released in May, 2015, or roughly 4 months before the game's official release. If we speculate that they will do this for Cyberpunk 2077 also, and it's reasonable to speculate this, then perhaps they will release the system requirements 4 months before its release also, some time in December 2019.

That's just speculation though, but that's all we are going to have until they do actually know what the specs are and release them publicly.

https://techraptor.net/content/witcher-3-pc-system-requirements-announced

skeletonbow: There is a big difference between selling games designed for Windows XP/7/8 now, even though those OSs are no longer supported by Microsoft, and releasing a brand new game after the support from Microsoft for those operating systems has already ended.

This is a new product coming out after the life of those operating systems has ended. For existing games sold in the store which supported those operating systems which have now become end of life, GOG sold those games to many people when the operating systems were still supported by Microsoft, and while they're not obligated to keep supporting them forever, they've chosen to do so for most if not all of them because presumably the support load of doing so for games designed to run on those systems anyway - is low, and not much is likely to change.

It's a very big difference between that and a new product coming out which the game developer will be supporting for some number of years to come, and having to try to make all patches and updates, DLC, any expansions etc. continue to work on all of the systems they advertised it to officially support at launch. Announcing the game is supported on Windows 7 right now would mean a commitment to support the game on that platform probably until 2022 or later. Bad business decision for an EOL operating system.

The word "support" as used for selling other publishers games in a store like GOG, and directly supporting the customers of a game you designed yourself and have to make the code run on the systems you're claiming to support for N years, are very very different things.

rainydaygaming: If you're on Linux, fine. But learn to live with the consequences. Why would any business port a giant project like this to GNU / Linux just to satisfy <2% of its customers?

Pangaea666: Same here -- but then I dropped Windows altogether some years ago. I'll wait till it has been released and then make up my mind:

1) Is it even a game I actually want? Will I like it?
2) Is it playable on Linux DRM Free?

It took Witcher 3 many years to qualify. Eventually it did, and I bought it, although it was not thanks to CDPR's (lack of) effort.

GameRager: What about all those gov't emplyees using Win7/etc? I am sure they won't all upgrade(and i'm guessing with Win10's online needs gov't workers wouldn't use it or switch to it as much).

B1tF1ghter: This may be pretty funny to say to somebody that doesn't know yet but here goes nothing...
Windows 7 CAN have extended suppport for another couple of years IF you choose to buy a care package of sorts.
You can literaly buy extended support package for Windows 7 and those companies will do that...

skeletonbow: Government agencies, hospitals and similar whom are traditionally slow to migrate to newer computer hardware and operating systems due mostly to funding constraints will unfortunately not be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 unless they appeal for additional funding or cut back on spending on CT and MRI scanners, maybe lay off some nurses, office employees etc.

skeletonbow: Government agencies, hospitals and similar whom are traditionally slow to migrate to newer computer hardware and operating systems due mostly to funding constraints will unfortunately not be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 unless they appeal for additional funding or cut back on spending on CT and MRI scanners, maybe lay off some nurses, office employees etc.

GameRager: I mainly meant that they won't likely upgrade to Win10 for thier office uses/jobs just because Win7 reaches EOL.

faroot: I knew an accountant who insisted on continuing to use DOS and a DOS accounting application up until 2010; she said it worked fine and she knew how it worked and she didn't want anything to change, because things would surely break and she would no longer know all the details.

DOS isn't *my* cup of tea, but she had a point; "if it ain't broken, don't fix it."

faroot: I'm split between joking that hospitals *will* make those sacrifices to play Cyberpunk 2077, versus not trying to joke and just appreciating your dry humor. :)

faroot: I knew an accountant who insisted on continuing to use DOS and a DOS accounting application up until 2010; she said it worked fine and she knew how it worked and she didn't want anything to change, because things would surely break and she would no longer know all the details.

DOS isn't *my* cup of tea, but she had a point; "if it ain't broken, don't fix it."

Soulsphere: If I purchase Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG.com, will I get a steam key with it?

Soulsphere: If I purchase Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG.com, will I get a steam key with it?