Windows 11 Finally Claims A Major Gaming Victory On Steam, But Will It Last?
It took a minute (and not a New York minute) but as of right now, Windows 11 is the most widely-used operating system among gamers on Valve's Steam platform. It finally leapfrogged Windows 10 after trailing its predecessor by around 6% just a few short months ago. In addition, there was some interesting movement in GPU usage as well, which we'll get to shortly.
One thing to note about Steam's monthly hardware and software survey results is they're not necessarily indicative of the entire gaming landscape as a whole. The percentages can temporarily shift in wild ways, depending on which systems participate. To that end, it's worth noting that Black Myth: Wukong is a smash hit, especially in China, with over 10 million copies sold and a peak of over 2.4 million concurrent players on Steam.
That could affect the survey, especially if there's an uptick in players logging in through internet cafes in China. Regardless of the reason(s), however, over half of the systems pinged in Steam's August 2024 survey were running Windows 11—50.81%, to be exact, which is a 3.36% increase over the previous month. Almost the entire gain came as the expense of Windows 10, which fell 3.29% to 48.66%.
It's a near even split, though the minor victory in Windows 11's favor is notable because it's the first time it has surpassed Windows 10 in usage. Whether it sticks remains to be seen. What's also interesting is that the latest data from StatCounter paints a different picture. According to StatCounter, among all versions of Windows, Windows 11 holds a 31.62% share, versus a dominant 64.17% for Windows 10.
We mentioned that there was also some interesting movement in the GPU category as well. As has been the case for the past several months, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 is the most widely-used graphics card among Steam gamers at 5.51%, according to the survey results. However, the mobile GeForce RTX 4060 (laptop GPU) traded places with the desktop GeForce GTX 1650 for the second spot (4.55%), climbing 1.34% in the past month.
What this really tells us is the same story as before—most gamers gravitate towards more affordable GPUs versus the more expensive flagships. The GeForce RTX 4090, for example, sits at 0.98%.
You can check out Steam's full survey results for August 2024 to glimpse other trends in the gaming space (like Sony's PlayStation VR2 headset making an introductory appearance).
