What you need to know
- Usage of Windows 11 among Steam gamers increased to 15.59% in February 2022.
- That increase marks a 2.03% growth of Windows 11 usage by Steam gamers since last month.
- Windows 10 is still the most commonly used operating system among Steam users, with 75.59% of people on the platform preferring Microsoft's older operating system.
Gaming enthusiasts are slowly adopting Windows 11, according to the latest Steam hardware and software survey. Windows 10 still dominates at 75.69%, but Windows 11 is steadily on the rise, reaching 15.59% after a 2.03% increase since last month.
Steam's hardware and software figures aren't an overall indicator of Windows 11 market share. They do, however, show that people are upgrading to Windows 11 or getting newer PCs to play the best PC games.
Despite being out of support, Windows 7 is still used by 4.0% of gamers that run Steam. Windows 8.1 is the least popular Windows OS among Steam users, with only 0.63% using it.
In what isn't a surprise, macOS still trails behind almost all forms of Windows. Only 2.62% of Steam users are on macOS, which is even below Windows 7.
Gamers may not be in a rush to upgrade to Windows 11. While the operating system provides some nice features for gaming, such as HDR support, many of the most popular PC games still work well on Windows 10. The minimum requirements of Windows 11 may also prevent some PCs from upgrading to the new OS.
Other statistics from the February Steam hardware and software survey show little significant change. Intel (68.93%) is still ahead on the CPU side of things, and NVIDIA (76.14%) still dominates the GPU space.
The Oculus Quest 2 is now used by 47.09% of gamers on Steam. That's more than triple its closest competitor, the Valve Index. The original Oculus Quest (3.83%) and Oculus Quest 2 now account for more than 50% of Steam users that have VR headsets.
