Windows 10 now used by more than a third of Steam gamers

[Shawn Knight]

Valve has updated its Steam hardware and software survey for the month of January. Of particular interest is the fact that more than a third of gamers on the platform are now running a Windows 10-based system.

The breakdown reveals that 32.77 percent of Steam users are running the 64-bit version of Windows 10 with the remaining 1.28 percent utilizing a 32-bit copy of Microsoft's latest. Collectively, that's a 1.59 percent increase compared to the previous month.

Unsurprisingly, the increase is largely coming from Windows 8 / 8.1 defectors as usage of those operating systems dropped 1.2 percent month-over-month.

Despite its impressive growth, Windows 10 still lags behind Windows 7 by a sizable margin. According to the report, 34.31 percent of gamers currently use Windows 7 64-bit while another 7.77 percent have the 32-bit version installed. Collectively, usage of Windows 7 dropped just 0.5 percent versus the previous month.

Steam, which now has more than 125 million active users worldwide, is by far the most popular platform for PC gaming.

As PCWorld correctly highlights, Windows 10 adoption will likely see a gradual increase over the coming months. What'll be really interesting, however, is to see how Windows 7 adoption is impacted once gaming studios get serious about making DirectX 12 games. As you may know, DirectX 12 is only compatible with Windows 10.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/63686-windows-10-now-used-more-than-third-steam.html

 

[amstech]

It's a much better OS for 2K/4K gaming, and handles the scaling better as you go in and out of programs. That and gamers want the latest and greatest, even if some things like DX12 won't be utilized worth a damn for a few years.
I tried it and liked it, went back to Windows 7 though as I like it better...for the moment.

 

[cliffordcooley]

That lets you know Windows gamers are the main ones upgrading to Windows 10.

 

[MovingTarget]

Steam is not a platform. PC is a platform. Steam is used to buy games not play them. If you're writing for tech, learn tech.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Steam is not a platform. PC is a platform. Steam is used to buy games not play them. If you're writing for tech, learn tech.

Steam is an application based Platform for PC. It's not just a store, each game has to be configured to Steam specifications in order to be available on Steam. If Steam was only a store, it wouldn't be required to download or install the games that were purchased.

This describes Steam very much. Hardware is not the only constraint for a platform. Consider it a software platform within a hardware platform.

A computing platform is, in the most general sense, whatever a pre-existing piece of computer software or code object is designed to run within, obeying its constraints, and making use of its facilities.

 

[Puiu]

The Steam platform is pretty much the only way to determine how many hardcore gamers used the new OS.
As someone who uses a laptop for my gaming fix I can safely say that I saw a big improvement over win 7 and it's not just for gaming.

If I'm right we will see an increase of windows 10 installs just before the "free" offer expires and another one after TH2 is released.

 

[Garth Smith]

I gotta agree with cliffordcooley.

When releasing games, we refer to each release as a different platform. So prepping a Microsoft Windows Store release will get it's own build and go through testing, while releasing for Steam will get a different build with it's own testing. They have different achievement systems, different user ids, different cloud saves, different a lot of things.

We will normally refer to Steam and Windows Store as separate platforms even if both are PC.