Will there be one?

Please say yes.

32bit cripples Skyrim without ENBoost, for example.

64 bit is pretty necessary now, let alone with modding.

I see the consoles all have 8GB ram, and the requirements are listing "32bit or 64bit" as well as "4GB" for maximum settings and "2GB" for low; but if you don't compile for 64 bit it'd be a crime against the entire modding community, at this point. 64 bit processors have been mainstream for a decade, there's no point in sticking strictly to 32bit when 64bit is so important to a game's memory usage, stability, performance.

Going by Steam's hardware survey:

54% of it's user-base have 5GB system ram or more

90% with 4GB VRAM or more

81% are on a 64 bit operating system

97% of all processors are 64 bit.

79% are on DX11 compatible video cards.

This all comes together to mean that 64 bit benefits more users than 32 bit, by far.

Yes

There's a system requirements list released?

Not to my knowledge. But Howard did very specifically talk about the things that they were now able to do with the additional memory that's available on the new gen consoles. It's my understanding that that memory wouldn't be available on a 32 bit executable.

While Steam specs are not a bad bar for PC gamers, it is NOT a 100% full picture of the potential sales base of a PC game. Do you understand what going into a meeting and telling your bosses you would like to IGNORE 20% of the potential Steam users? Now if you are talking about developing BOTH a 32 bit and 64 bit EXE, that meeting is going to have to convince someone to basically double the testing and support budget for PCs....

I don't disagree that a 64bit EXE would be great, but it presents a hard row to hoe for convincing the higher ups it's actually worth it.

The 4GB limit is a chipset / x86 processor limitation, not a generic computer / console hardware issue. I have no idea about the Xbox One or PS4 hardware capabilities in terms of memory access, but a 32-Bit Windows (XP/VISTA/7) OS PC CAN access up to 32GB of memory (if the chipset allows), but requires a special line in a system startup file and also code extensions in the application. It is usually reserved for (now pretty old) Database Servers that must run 32-bit for some archaic reason. Can't say I've ever seen a game use it (beyond something like the existing intercept EXEs that are player hacks and nothing official). If it requires a different EXE, you might as well go full 64Bit (not that a 64-bit EXE could NOT run on an additional ram enabled 32-bit system).

Wouldn't surprise me one bit if this game is 64bit only.

There are a few user made lists of these on the internet and it looks like about 30 - 40 games (60% are shooters). Keep in mind Fallout 4 is on some of them (and we KNOW the specs are not released) so there is some skepticism of their accuracy. It's certainly possible Fallout 4 will be 64 bit only, but I think that depends a lot on how it's developed on Xbox ONE.

Releasing on the new console generation is a natural point to say "we're upping the minimum requirements on PC". The low bar set by the Xbox 360 and PS3 meant that the same game could be made to run on a low-spec PC. The new consoles eliminate the old RAM restrictions, so it is reasonable to expect that all versions of the game will now be built around a higher amount or RAM (Todd specifically mentioned how more RAM opened up the possibilities of what they could do with the game). This might logically mean that the game must be 64 bit. And it's about time!

As both Xbox One and Playstation 4 use 64 bit processors, 64 bit will be the game's baseline. The commercial argument is whether it's worth branching a 32 bit image and significantly increasing testing costs for the sake of the 32 bit processor owning customers.

I'm not sure how far a 32 bit OS running on a 64 bit processor impacts an application running under Windows. Anybody?

Plenty of games are 64bit only these days, I think it's very likely that Fallout 4 will have a 64bit executable and somewhat likely that it will be 64bit exclusive.

Me either. I also hope that it is. It's time for Bethesda to advance with the tech go make better worlds.

32 bit is so yesterday, better be 64

3%. 97% are using 64 bit processors. 3% that won't be able to meet basic hardware requirements (even previous generation console level) anyway. PAE is non-applicable as long as M$ continues to cripple 32 bit operating systems. (Linux supports PAE and 64GB ram on 32 bit. M$ limits everything "because of driver instability.")

The way I understand it, 32 bit M$ OS on 64 bit hardware would have the same limitations as a 32bit M$ OS on 32bit hardware. Microsoft's PAE is crippled and irrelevant. (Nobody is using Server 2003 for gaming.)

There are no "official" system requirements released, but I found a rough estimate on here somewhere going by Skyrim's engine details and went by that.

An 32 bit os will not be able to run a game like Fallout 4.

You have an 1GB graphic card, windows take 1 GB, this leaves you with 2 GB for the game.

Skyim with the HD texture pack and some smaller mods uses 1.5 GB.

Fallout 4 will use more, where is no reason to release it as an 32 bit executable if it can only run on a 64 bit OS anyway.

As the consoles has 8 GB total and game can use 5-6 of it you would also risk that the pc version ran out of memory.

It does not matter very much for most programs if they are 32 or 64 outside of memory.

I believe the PC version of Fallout 4 is only going to run on Windows 64-bit Operating Systems (OS') and will have a 64-bit .exe.

The PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One are 64-bit.

Todd Howard said that Fallout 4 is running on their next generation Creation Engine which has Physically Based Rendering (PBR) and dynamic volumetric lighting which he said is tessellated, tessellation exists in DirectX 11 only, which gives geometry.

No way the PC version of Fallout 4 runs on Windows 32-bit Operating Systems (OS') or even run on 32-bit .exe.

I always wish everyday Bethesda Game Studios would update the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to have a 64-bit .exe.

Last 32 bit CPU was pentium 4, think some atom cpu are 32 bit also, this will be way below system requirements anyway, probably below fallout 3 ones too.

20% probably uses 32 bit OS, you can upgrade to windows 10 for "free" or get hand of an 64 bit version of 7, same licence key should work.

Microsoft ignored PAE as it was pointless, just as well go for 64 bit.

No, it would be. Older gen consoles only had ~500MB of memory. Even if Fallout 4 only requires 2 GB of RAM on consoles it'd still be four times as much as what was available for Skyrim/Fallout 3/etc.

I wouldn't get your hopes too high regarding 64-bit memory addressing capability. Nothing that they've shown so far would require that, even on PC. The big reason why not to get your hopes up is that Bethesda is building off of an existing code-base, which means there may be a lot of things that would need to be updated to make it 64-bit compatible. Unless Bethesda decided that update would actually be required for the core game usage, it's unlikely that they'd actually bother to do so - there are still plenty of 32-bit only video games being released.