I was talking to a developer about bringing a WP8 game to Windows 8, and he said that for it to happen, you HAVE to have a non-touch solution for the controls. That likely means that Project Sparks plays like an MMO on a non-touch PC, and I'd even argue that a non-touch PC is a better option than having a small tablet for the game. WASD walking and all of that and Roller Coaster Tycoon-like menu navigation (not really sure how it goes, in reality) sound like they'd work just fine.
The issue is, they're not really aiming this at the touch-based stuff, per se. They're aiming it at laptops and hybrids in general, which run on the same hardware (on the x86 front). Not having a guideline for desktop gaming sucks because many won't want to get it on a desktop when the requirements don't specify non-mobile needs. For example, I have a Radeon 5850 in my desktop. This calls for an 8850M. That normally is a 3-generation gap in performance, from 5000 series to 8000 series, but if you actually look at the specifications between the two, my desktop video card basically wins out in everything but memory quantity. Just looking at the recommendation though, it sounds like my card is 2 or 3 years behind what's needed. The same could go for the CPU, where it generically asks for an "i5" CPU.
I simply don't believe this needs even a Sandy Bridge i5, though. We're talking about a fairly-casual game that's asking (vaguely) for hardware needed to run a game like Battlefield, depending on the Core CPU's generation. On top of that, just saying "Core i7" in the mobile space makes little sense, because they run through several variants of that, with "M" and "U" versions being a couple of examples. Maybe it's just the not-yet-ready nature of the game, but they'd better REALLY tighten up the specifications before release, because it's 10 times more confusing than it should be.