Windows 8.1 Gaining Popularity Among Gamers As Windows 7 Declines

Steam’s Hardware Survey, which is updated every month, is always an interesting source of statistics about the general trends among PC gamers in terms of hardware and software. We’ve seen a lot of news, statistics, facts and figures about the usage of operating systems over the past week but how does that all relate to gamers? Well according to Steam’s survey Windows 8.1 is gaining popularity with gamers. Windows 8.1 gained 0.89% while Windows 7 declined 0.88%, interestingly Windows XP also gained overall share while Windows 8 and Windows Vista continue their respective declines.

In the grand scheme of things Windows based gamers have declined as OSX and Linux users have increased – but this is only by a small margin. Surprisingly, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit is now more popular than 32 bit Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. Windows 7 64 bit is still the most popular operating system for gamers but increasing numbers of gamers are now choosing 64 bit Windows 8.1, possibly to access new graphics features like DirectX 11.2 support, or just to stay “up to date”.

Source: Steam

Images courtesy of Steam (Valve)