14 DAY TRIAL // New data provided by Valve for its Steam gaming platform shows that while Windows 10 is indeed the number one choice for its users, Windows 7 is the one that’s growing faster.
While this could be worrying for Microsoft given that an important share of Steam users stick with Windows 7 to play their favorite games, Valve shows that Windows 10 gained 0.44 percent last month for the 64-bit version to eventually reach 50.03 percent.
On the other hand, the 32-bit version of Windows 10 declined 0.27 percent to 0.63 percent, so overall the latest version of Windows is currently powering 50.66 percent of the computers where Steam is installed.
All the other Windows versions dropped during the month of August, and the biggest decline was experienced by the 32-bit Windows 7, which went down 0.96 percent to 3.12 percent.
Overall, Windows continues to be the leading desktop operating system for playing games on Steam with 96.30 percent, up 0.18 percent from the previous month, mostly thanks to Windows 10 64-bit.
Non-Windows operating systems for gamers
Apple’s macOS declined 0.03 percent to 3.03 percent, but the good news is that macOS version 10.12.6 increased 0.91 percent to 1.04 percent. The same thing for Linux, which lost 0.11 percent to 0.63 percent, with Ubuntu 16.04.3 the only version that posted growth to eventually reach 0.06 percent.
Microsoft is getting ready to introduce a new Windows 10 version on October 17, and the company has included several improvements for gamers, though it remains to be seen if these help boost the operating system’s share on Steam.
Until now, Windows 7 has managed to survive the Windows 10 push, despite dropping from more than 50 percent before the launch of the latest Windows version. But the more worrying thing for Microsoft is that users don’t seem too keen on giving up on Windows 7, despite the approaching end of support in January 2020.