January 27, 2009 - LONDON (January 27, 2008) – SEGA Europe Ltd. today announced that the next iteration of the critically acclaimed Total War series, Empire: Total War, will be shipped to stores in North America and Canada March 3rd and available to buy in stores around the world on March 4th. In addition, customers will be able to purchase the game as a digital download at 6:00 PM GMT on the 3rd of March, with the exception of North American and Canadian customers who will be able to purchase a digital download at 9:00 AM GMT on the 4th of March.

Please note that all retail and digital download copies require activation via STEAM, the leading online platform for PC games and digital entertainment. If purchased via STEAM, pre-loading will be available 48 hours in advance of the release date in your territory. For more information about STEAM please visit www.steampowered.com.

The minimum system specifications for Empire: Total War are: Operating System: Windows XP 32(service pack 2), Windows Vista 32 OS. Processor: 2.4 GHz Single Core Intel or AMD equivalent processor. System Memory: 1GB RAM (XP) 2GB RAM (Vista). Graphics Card: 256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible video card (shader 2.0 or higher). Sound Card: Directx9.0c compatible sound card. Windows compatible mouse & keyboard. 15 GB free uncompressed hard drive space.

Empire: Total War is set in the 18th century, a turbulent era that is the most requested by Total War's loyal fan base and a period alive with global conflict, revolutionary fervor and technological advances. With themes such as the Industrial Revolution, America's struggle for independence, the race to control Eastern trade routes and the globalization of war on land and sea, Empire: Total War promises to be the richest and most dynamic PC strategy game of all time. Empire: Total War will be released on March 3rd, exclusively for PC.

source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/948/948570p1.html

This is the first game of the Total War series that has really low requirements! My brother's 5 and half years old PC can still play this game.

I was thinking the same thing about system specs. These aren't actually that far ahead of Medieval 2: Total War. I must admit the game must be really scalable, is there any info on the recommended PC specs?

Also, I can't wait to get my hands on this one, Naval battles have finally been added.

Whoop Whoop.

this game is going to be rocking my desktop. i think the might be a slight chance that i will ignore t3h ps3 for a week or two when this game first comes out.

Medieval II Total War:

Minimum
CPU 1.5GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or AMD® Athlon 64
9000 MB
RAM 512 MB
Graphics card 128 MB

Recommended
CPU Pentium 4® 2.4GHz (2400MHz) or equivalent AMD® Athlon 64
9000 MB
RAM 1024 MB
Graphics card 128 MB

These recommended sorta became the new minimum except for the graphics card

i'm assuming a 1.7gh duo is good it also has to work with wine but I can always check the site first
(if you don't know what i'm talking about http://appdb.winehq.org/ )

I can't wait, I feared it could be coming at the end of March, this is certainly in my top 3 most anticipated games of the year, I can't wait!

I was hoping for a lot higher sistem requirements. Now I'm afraid the game wont have the awesome grafix I'd hoped for. But perhaps it don't matter because Total War games have a tuff learning curve, don't they?
(I never got into them so far)

Piracy forces devs to create games for low-end PCs.

@ slimebeast, what are you talking about, having a game that can play on a great range of PCs so everyone can play it

In all Total War games, there are going to be thousands of soldiers on screen, certainly in Rome you could get about 8,000 individual soldiers on screen at a time, and each had their own animations, so it is hard to make all of them look incredible, but the videos of the sea battles look incredible with the amount of detail on the ships as they are shot, this game will look great

But Crisis chose a different path - higher sistem requirements which usually correlates with better graphics. I prefer that path.

Empire uses probably a slightly upgraded Rome/Medieval II engine, not a brand new one.

I hope the sea battles will look amazing.

How many players TW supports in online games?