Windows 7 loses first place in Steam OS charts

Apr 3, 2016 06:54 GMT  ·  By

It took only 8 months for Windows 10 to overtake Windows 7 in Steam share data, thus becoming the top operating system for those who are playing games using Valve’s gaming platform.

Specifically, Windows 10 64-bit is now the leading choice for Steam gamers with a share of 36.97 percent, up no less than 2.96 percent in the last month.

Windows 7 has been the top option for many years, but last month it dropped 1.22 percent to 32.99 percent and thus lost the first place. Windows 8.1 64-bit is also losing users, down 0.31 percent last month, so it’s now at 12.93 percent on Steam.

Overall, Windows 7 still leads the charts thanks to the 6.97 percent share of the 32-bit, but version-wise, the 64-bit SKU of Windows 10 keeps growing and will continue to do so in the coming months too.

No competition on Steam

What’s also worth mentioning is that in March, Windows 10 was the only operating system that actually gained users on Steam (and Windows Vista 64-bit, but in this case the increase was of only 0.01 percent). Windows 10 64-bit gained 2.96 percent on Steam last month, while the 32-bit improved its share by 0.01 percent. All the other Windows desktop versions lost users during the month.

As far as rivals are concerned, Windows seems to have no competition on Steam and the addition of DirectX 12 brings more people on Windows 10. Mac OS X dropped 0.08 percent to 3.32 percent while Linux lost 0.06 percent of its share to settle at 0.85 percent.

Windows 10’s growth is very likely to continue in the coming months as Microsoft continues working on the operating system and, at the same time, also keeps pushing users to upgrade. The new OS is offered as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8.1 users as part of a promo that ends on July 29, 2016.