A demo release would probably we welcomed, so we can try the game out before we purchase. But demos are so rare nowadays :(

Indeed, the only to be certain whether game will run on your system or not is through a demo. The last AAA game that I saw with a demo is The Evil Withnin and I was quite surprised actually since these days there are very scarce. Not counting Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeros which is also essentially a paid demo.

I'm still giving it a benefit of doubt. I was pleasantly surprised how well e.g. The Witcher 2 ran in medium settings or so on one HP lightweight laptop which wasn't really a gaming laptop (even though it had some kind of NVidia GPU though, but a bit lower end already back then). So it might be Witcher 3 still runs pretty ok even with a PC below the requirements.

I think we can thank SSDs for that, pushing lower capacity hard drives to people. I prefer HDDs due to their higher capacity. On a 2 or 3 terabyte HDD, 40GB per game isn't that bad.

Well I definitely will wait till they push a demo out or the game gets on sale later cause seeing that my new R9 270x which is basically a HD 7870 can barely run this game is not very good.

Fair enough and to be truthful I was mostly thinking about TW2's specs here. I just think it sucks that fans of 1 and 2 might not be able to play this game. I also find it a bit ludicrous that the req. specs are that high. Lots of people will not be able to play this game and not all can afford to upgrade their PC.

well, to be fair, not everybody can afford to go to space either... and nobody says you need to play the game the second it's released :) I myself usually get to play a game some 2-3 years later

exactly the same happened to me with Witcher 1, my computer was too slow to run it... and with Witcher 2 I only could play it on lowlowlow ;)

I would argue that resolution is very much important, though not as important as the framerate. Still, more important than details of assets, so I always go 1080p/60fps even if the game looks like crap.

One of the main reasons why consoles are still so popular and where many people prefer to play their games. :)

I see many people saying that they don't want to upgrade their PC for just one game. But this is inevitable as the medium of video games continues to progress while getting bigger and better (arguably) in scope as well as ambition. The Witcher 3 is certainly one of those games that strives to be a benchmark for the new generation of Action/RPGs and no I am not going to count Dragon Age: Inquisition in that regard. Only time will tell whether The Witcher 3 will live up to the hype and expectations but judging by the pedigree of CDPR along with the time they are taking to make it the best possible experience, I am fairly excited as well as optimistic about it.

So if there is one game in my opinion that really justifies upgrading your PC for, then it is this one and besides if you do meet or exceed the required specs I am positive that you would have no problems with any big games for atleast another 5 years. It is an investment for the future IMO but that is ofcourse for the people who can spare that kind of money, otherwise folks can just wait a few years until the hardware and the game is much more affordable.

Resolution is very important, I certainly cannot disagree! :)
My "I don't really mind playing in lower resolutions" implicitly meant "when the current standard is not an option". Imo, there is a very noticeable difference even between 900p and 1080p, and I won't even talk about superior ones!
I was just saying that, in case my system couldn't maximize the settings, I would be still fine in playing it using a lower one... provided that I can reach the 60FPS and a decent texture quality (I'm thinking about Mass Effect... *shivers*! Even more than 1080p cannot make a lot of difference there, imo). Maybe we are different in this: if the game "looks like crap", I prefer to sacrifice the resolution to let it look less crappy. This doesn't happen very often, though: the last time I had to do it was with Gothic 3 on my very old -now deceased- rig, and I preferred to keep a bit more details (better textures, more grass, higher render distance) rather than playing in the maximum resolution I could choose.

Well not really :

Bioshock Infinite (with Burial at sea) : 42 GB
Wolfenstein : 43GB
Evil Within : 39GB
FFXIII : 58GB

Nowadays 40GB is not really that exceptional anymore, especially for an open world game that is not a 360/PS3 port.

Well going to need to upgrade at some point that is for sure.

No, you aren´t, but their are two ways to go. Yours is the "lover quality" way---> that´s why it´s bad, Witcher II would have been as outdated as Witcher I was! But there is also a way to get highest quality...

... I support the idea of remastering both Witcher I & II with the current engine iteration once Witcher III is finshed! They´d all be looking and running quite well then!
Good image quality is real important for me as well, ways more important than good graphics. I´d appreciate if CDP would add an option to limit the game to 30 FPS, simply because Witcher II was play- and even enjoyable at 30 FPS (which doesn´t apply to many games at all)
But the problem was that the prerendered cutscenes were somehow runined by setting a FPS-Limiter via 3rd-Party-Tools, so a build-in option would be nice to have!

(as for resolution with older games: I use every resolution fix I can get, (e.g.: Infinity Engine Titles, 90% of 200X-Titels and so on) always use NeigherestNeighbour-Skaling for DosBox-powered games and so on. I really don´t think that GOG is linked to LowRes! :D :D :D

Damn, I was expecting something more in line with the previous one, but with higher memory and storage requirements. I can run it, but I doubt I'll be cranking it up to max anytime soon.

Would DX12 really reduce those requirements, I wonder? Or hasn't that been tested yet?

Well, I need a better graphics card and a better power supply to run this, so I might go for the Xbox One-version. If i do decide to buy better components, will my AMD A8-5600k 3,6 Ghz run this well? I thought the GPU took most of the load, so a 8-cored AMD-processor with 4 Ghz sounds slighly overkill.