Steam Begins Pre-Loading BioShock

Valve just sent us a press release announcing that BioShock, the highly-anticipated and award-winning first-person shooter by 2K Games is available for pre-purchase now via Steam. Starting today, gamers can pre-order BioShock on Steam (www.steamgames.com) for the price of $49.95 in the US and $54.95 in Europe. The game will then be unlocked on the release date of the retail version--August 21 in North America and August 24 in Europe--and those who purchase the game via Steam can begin downloading its assets now. The PC demo will be released tomorrow, August 17.

BioShock Download Recommended System Requirements
- Windows XP (SP 2) or Windows Vista
- 3.0 GHz dual core processor
- 2.0 GB RAM
- Pixel Shader 3.0 compliant video card with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
- 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
- 7.0 GB free hard disk space
- DirectX 9.0c or DirectX 10

The Steam page for Bioshock can be found right here with the options to pre-load (~5.5GB) and pre-order the game.