14 DAY TRIAL // While Windows 10 has a hard time growing bigger worldwide, Microsoft’s latest operating system is already dominating the gaming business, with Steam data showing that it’s currently number one in both the Windows and the non-Windows categories.
Statistics provided by Valve for its gaming platform put Windows 10 on the leading spot with a share of 49.10 percent, which means that nearly one in two computers running Steam are powered by this Windows version.
And what’s also very important is that Windows 10 improved by 0.73 percent last month for the 64-bit version and by 0.02 percent for 32-bit, becoming the only Windows operating system that didn’t go down in December.
While Windows 10 is powering nearly half of the Steam computers, Windows 7 is continuously declining, with December data pointing to a share of 28.60 percent, down 0.22 percent from the month before. The 32-bit version of Windows 7 also dropped during the month and is now at 5.27 percent.
Overall, Windows is leading the Steam charts with no less than 95.60 percent, which is an increase of 0.20 from November.
Non-Windows OS performance
On the other hand, both Apple’s macOS and Linux lost share on Steam. In December, macOS declined 0.15 percent, and is now powering only 3.44 percent of the PCs, while Linux lost 0.01 percent to 0.87 percent.
As far as older Windows operating systems are concerned, here’s something unexpected. Windows XP still shows up in the charts even though it no longer receives updates and improvements since April 2014. In December, no less than 1.15 percent of the Steam users were running Windows XP, which is even more than the 32-bit version of Windows 8.1 (currently at 0.27 percent).
For comparison, macOS Sierra 10.12.1 is running on just 1.14 percent of the Steam PCs, even though it was launched only a few weeks ago, so no, the world still doesn’t seem ready to completely give up on Windows XP.