At Microsoft's Surface event held in October 2016, the company announced the upcoming Creators Update, which will be coming early 2017.
The Creators Update, codenamed Redstone 2, was said to add several new features to Windows 10 focused on creativity, though no specific date was then given by Microsoft for the update's launch.
An exclusive report by MSPoweruser, however, claims that the Creators Update is just a few months away.
Windows 10 Creators Update To Be Released In April
According to the sources of MSPoweruser's Mehedi Hassan, Microsoft will launch the Creators Update in April. Similar to the Anniversary update, the Creators Update will be gradually rolled out to ensure best experience to current Windows 10 users. However, users will be allowed to manually start the download and installation of the Creators Update, if they would want the process to start immediately.
The report stated that the April launch date for the Creators Update goes against the fact that the insider builds of the update carry the version number 1703, which meant that the upgrade was being prepared for a March 2017 release as the "17" stood for 2017 and "03" meant the month of March. However, the final version number of the Creators Update will be 1704, marking an April 2017 release.
Changing version numbers in Insider Preview builds is something that Microsoft has done in the past, such as when the company changed the release number of the Xbox Anniversary Update to 1608 from 1607 last year.
Windows 10 Creators Update Features
The Windows 10 Creators Update will introduce several new features to the operating system, perhaps the biggest of which is the addition of the Windows Holographic user interface for virtual reality headsets powered by Windows 10. Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo are all planning to launch their own virtual reality headsets based on Windows 10 with price tags of as low as $299, which likely boost the adoption rate of the technology among consumers, leading to further development in the field.
Other features said to be coming with the Creators Update are 3D versions for Paint and PowerPoint, built-in game broadcasting through the integration of the Beam game streaming system, and the MyPeople feature.
It has also been previously reported that Microsoft could be adding a dedicated game mode to Windows 10, which will implement optimizations to improve the gaming experience of users by suppressing applications that are running in the background. Instead of using up valuable CPU and GPU resources on background applications, a Windows 10 computer on game mode will instead allocate the resources to the video game that the user is playing.
Microsoft is said to be finalizing the features that will be included in the Creators Update, with the update expected to have its included features locked in by middle or late January. Microsoft will then continue working on the final touches of the new features before the reported April release.
Redstone 3 In The Works?
Microsoft is said to have already started planning the next major Windows 10 update, codenamed Redstone 3, as work on the Creators Update winds down.
Redstone 3 is said to have a targeted launch date of before the end of 2017 and will include an improved design language for Windows 10.
