So I am at the point where I am optimizing and profiling my game and trying to decide what my minimum requirements should be. I am using OpenGL 4.2.

I want my game to be accessible to the casual gamer, or someone that does not have a souped up, or bleeding edge machine - especially since my engine is not using bleeding edge rendering techniques (it looks more like an Xbox 360 game). I have modest polygon counts and not huge numbers of models.

At the same time, I don't want to optimize for a dinosaur machine.

Ideally I think I would at least like my game to run at 1080p @ 30hz. I expect I'll be ready to release around a year from now (its not a huge project).

I get that a lot of this is dependent on the details of the game, and some of those details are yet to be pinned down since the game is still in development, but I am thinking that 2010 era, non-gaming laptops are just setting the bar a little too low at this point.

At the moment I am eyeing some gaming desktops on Amazon around the $400 range. A couple years old.

Suggestions and advice are appreciated. Note I am looking for both a desktop tower and a gpu recommendations (complete packages are nice too).

Thanks!

I think the stats on http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ should help get you started on what the average person has.

For what it's worth, basically any current "mid-range" GPU should have no trouble running a 360-esque game at 1080p 60 fps - even my 5-year-old mid-range GPU (a Radeon 7850) can do that.

After all, the previous-gen consoles are over a decade old at this point, and they weren't cutting-edge even when they came out.

IMO a good target might be the integrated Intel 4000 or whatever it is that you end up with when you don't bother with a video card. Lots of non-enthusiasts, non-gamers, and people who don't know any better are likely to be using this, so that could be a big part of your target audience. I don't know that they support OpenGL 4 though. If you're able to back down your OpenGL version to 3-point-something you'll get a lot of support for "casual" hardware back. I've been intentionally working with OpenGL 3.3 to give me the oldest version of OpenGL that still has the features I want.