Initially expected on February 3, the PC game will require owners to install Valve's digital distribution platform Steam in order to activate both retail and downloaded copies. North American customers will see the Steam release of Empire: Total War arrive on March 4, with buyers able to pre-load the game roughly 48 hours before.

In addition, Sega sent along the minimum system requirements:

• 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.