Epic Games vice president Mark Rein has dropped the next-gen bombshell by confirming that their mighty engine which powers hit games such as Gears of War, and Batman Arkham City is already running on next gen hardware.

At the DICE summit in Las Vegas this week, Rein confirmed that Epic would reveal Unreal Engine 4 later this year. The Unreal Engine 4 is also currently running with “systems we can’t name yet,” Rein is reported to have said during the DICE Awards.

Recently we reported that alpha forms of the next-generation Xbox console which could be named “XBOX 8″ – not 8 because it’s the eighth Xbox, but because it’s the eighth generation home console and heavily shares the same software as upcoming Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. It was reported to us that the next-gen console was on display by invite only during CES 2012, running a version of Battlefield 3 in next-gen visuals – most likely to be up on par with current high-spec gaming PC’s.

Microsoft previously reported that there will be no next-gen Xbox announcement at E3 2012, but then again we also remember the amount of times they denied an Xbox 360 Slim console before that was the surprise of E3 2010!

(part via NowGamer)