The Call of Duty battle royale beta is here for a good time, not a long time. Here are the Blackout system requirements.
The premise for Blackout – Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII’s very own battle royale mode – is pretty simple: what if PUBG, but with buttery smooth Call of Duty gameplay?
It’s a fair question. While Team Thumbsticks is still firmly of the belief that PUBG is the best battle royale game, it’s hard to argue that a bit more polish wouldn’t go amiss. To be fair to PUBG Corp. they are working on their ‘fix PUBG‘ campaign as we speak, but in a crowded market, competitors need a USP.
In Fortnite’s case, that was to make it child-friendly, which is all sorts of unsettling when you think about it. For others, it’s to co-opt other elements, like Overwatch-style classes or magical spells, or in the case of Radical Heights, to make it straight-up terrible in the pursuit of the 80s nostalgia zeitgiest.
For the other big players in the first-person shooter market, Activision and EA, that’s to lean into their strengths. For Battlefield’s upcoming Firestorm mode, that’s vehicular nonsense and beautiful graphics (with a 64-player limit; we love a bit of good programmer logic) and for Call of Duty’s Blackout? That means slick movement and very, very rapid gunplay.
But just what PC will you need to get in on the Call of Duty: Blackout beta?
Minimum Blackout system requirements
- OS: Windows 7 64-Bit or later
- CPU: Intel Core i5 2500k or AMD equivalent
- RAM: 8GB RAM
- HDD: 40GB HD space
- Video: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2 GB / GTX 1050 2GB or AMD Radeon HD 7950
- DirectX: Version 11.0 compatible video card or equivalent
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
Recommended Blackout system requirements
- OS: Windows 10 64 Bit
- CPU: Intel Core i7 4770k or AMD equivalent
- RAM: 12GB RAM
- HDD: 40GB HD space
- Video: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 / GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon R9 390 / AMD RX 580
- DirectX: Version 11.0 compatible video card or equivalent
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
And to be honest, it runs just fine on the GTX 1050 Ti-equipped laptop we have in for review at the moment, so the requirements seem as reasonable as they appear. Worth noting that these aren’t officially the system requirements for the final Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII release, but they’ll serve as a decent guide.
You can begin pre-loading the Blackout beta now via the battle.net launcher, with the wider beta kicking off at 10am PT today, September 15th (that’s 6pm BST) and running through until 10am PT (6pm BST) on September 17th.
We’ve already tried it – and we’ll have some thoughts in due course – and will probably be dipping in again over the weekend, so we’ll see you on the battlegrounds battlefield blackout… place?
