The first official news of Futuremark's next iteration in their 3DMark benchmarking series has popped up today in the form of an announcement from the company. The new version with a working title of 3DMark for Windows 8 is now in development and scheduled for release sometime in 2012.

Jukka Mäkinen had the following to say about it in today's announcement :-

With Windows 8 gamers will be able to enjoy their games on a wide range of devices from lightweight tablets to heavy-duty desktop rigs. Faced with so much choice it will be hard to work out which devices offer the best value for money. Fortunately 3DMark for Windows 8 will be our most wide-reaching 3DMark ever, able to accurately measure and compare gaming performance across all devices and graphical feature sets available with Windows 8.

So, it looks like a new approach is on the cards this time around with more widespread support for not only high end desktops, but the mass of other devices that Windows 8 will be used on as well (including tablets, ultrabooks etc.)

Refer to the source link below for the full announcement!