http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/quake/index.php?game_section=sysreq

Ran fine on my 486 DX4/100 at low resolutions.

Users are pretty ignorant as stated previously best to over exaggerate than under exaggerate to reduce tech support calls.

Well I'm finding that demos are my best friend.

I think the developers should state "Minimum Reqs such n such + we don't know if it will work on less because we haven't tried it on less and if you have less there will be no refund - here is a demo to benchmark and see for yourself."

I know us guys with eight year old Presarios are a small sales demographic but I still think they might be scaring a decent portion of potential sales away.

Zeno Clash works fast and smooth on my system and damn is it awesome!

I think developers could state if a game requieres SSE2 instructions or not, instead of saying the game requires a dual core when thats NOT true.

yes the problem with small sized indie games are that they are not optimized well, the recent game magicka was pointed out for the same reason require higher system requirements than that of starcraft 2, the developer paradox responded well to the faqs read it,
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1739863
[Integrated graphic cards FAQ
Q: Why a FAQ?
A: We're getting lots of questions about integrated graphic processors (IGP henceforth) and requests to add support for them.

Q: Why cant I play Magicka on my laptop?
A: Most likely because Your IGP isn't good enough to run Magicka. Very few IGPs are good enough. Especially Intel Graphics Cards have very poor performance and can't handle Magicka.

Take another close look at the minimum requirements regarding graphic cards:
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon® X1900

Q: But my IGP should be able to run the game!
A:Remember that laptop versions of graphic cards have noticeably worse performance than non-mobile ones. A 8800M is NOT as good as a regular 8800.

Q: But I can can run Starcraft 2! Why not a little game like Magicka?
A: The fine folks at blizzard have dozens and dozens of engineers who've consciously made the effort to optimize the game to run on low end machines.
The arrowhead team, while also fine, consist of 7 developers. Of which 2 are programmers.
When the choice came between additional gameplay features and optimize performance on IGP's we chose the former.

What would you have chosen in our position?

Q: But I can play Crysis with this IGP! Why not Magicka?
A: Again, Crytek probably have even more engineers working on the engine than SC2.

Q: Does this mean you'll never support IGP's?
A: Once the major patching is out of the way (hopefully soon) we'll focus more on adding new feature/polish and of course more content! We will do additional optimization, but the fact still remains that we prefer to create new fun content than to do time consuming optimization. So we can't promise or commit to anything, but we'll look into it.

Q: Aaawww man, that blows.
A: We're very sorry, but the simple fact is that generally speaking IGP's aren't great for gaming.
Let us know if you have any more questions and we'll update the thread.
Sincerely,
/ The Paradox & Arrowhead team ]
thats the reason with a team of just 7 they cant really focus on optimization im sure some of the indie games have less like 3 people or 2 working on the game

IGPs are another good reason to try the demo before buying a game, especially when we're talking about Intel driver. At the moment there is a lack of OpenGL support, which is a big problem for many indie games. So, while Minecraft is running not great but fine on my old desktop, it really plays awful on my notebook with Intel HD graphics. To be fair, IGPs are not designed for gaming and have however other benefits. It's a question for what you need your notebook, and in my case the attention was more on battery life, noise and price than on gaming.

Edit: Aww, It seems I'm too stupid to make working links, so here the URL what I mean with lack of OpenGL support: http://communities.intel.com/message/100689

like i said earlier if the developers decide to optimize well, the game can pretty much at least run at a playable frame rate on the igp, one of the first indie games to shock me with that was dogfighter on steam, i bought it after playing games like crysis and hl 2 ep2 on my laptop which ran awesome to only find out i can barely run dogfighter at 5-8 fps, and its around less than 500mb game size

Magika runs on my system but I'm using desktop not laptop or notebook. It runs slightly slow though.

And

Drum roll, please

I just got Square-Enix's The Last Remnant to run on my system in 1024 x 768 with everything set to medium and shadows off. I had it windowed but I also had it full screen and either or didn't seem to make a significant difference, it worked.