Windows 11 has finally done it and managed to overtake Windows 10 when it comes to market share among PC gamers.
As you may have guessed, this is the Steam Hardware Survey which runs every month and is a snapshot of the configurations of the various gaming PCs used on Valve’s platform.
August 2024 figures show that Windows 11 has gained 3.36% of Steam users, bringing the total to 49.17%.
Windows 10 fell proportionally by 3.07% to end up at 47.09% for the month. So there are now over 2% more gamers on Windows 11 than on its predecessor.
Other versions of Windows are pretty much negligible on Steam, with Windows 7 being the only OS worth mentioning, but even that only has a 0.37% adoption rate. Outside of Windows, Linux has a 1.92% share of gamers, with macOS accounting for 1.3%.
Windows 11 represented 46.63% of gamers on Steam in June and 47.45% in July, and has been growing by percentage point jumps, or half a percent or so, of late. So that’s quite a growth spurt for August.
Analysis: Sudden increase
We didn’t expect Windows 11 to surpass Windows 10 so quickly, in short. Is there a specific reason for the sudden surge? None that come to mind, though it could also just be that the need to move from Windows 10 feels more urgent now that there’s not much more than a year left before the older operating system reaches end-of-life (in October 2025).
If you look at just the Windows versions on Steam, Windows 11 now has just over 50% of the market share.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, this progress isn’t remotely reflected outside the world of gaming. According to Statcounter, Windows 11’s overall user share for August is at 31.6%, compared to 64.1% for Windows 10, so the latter still has double the number of users of the former – it’s not even close.
Microsoft hopes that the overall picture will change radically in the coming year, that’s for sure. AI will play a major role in that development, complemented by Copilot+ PCs that are predicted to do big things in the unit movement department.