Windows 11 is finally more popular than Windows 10 – at least in the world of PC gaming

Windows 11 has finally done it and managed to overtake Windows 10 when it comes to market share with PC gamers.

As you might have guessed, this is the Steam Hardware Survey which is conducted every month and is a snapshot of the configurations of the various gaming PCs used on Valve’s platform.

The figures for August 2024 show that Windows 11 has gained 3.36% of Steam users, so now it has a total of 49.17%.

Windows 10 dropped by a proportionate amount, dipping by 3.07% to finish on 47.09% for the month – so there are now over 2% more gamers on Windows 11, than on its predecessor.

Other Windows versions are basically negligible on Steam, with Windows 7 being the only OS worth mentioning, but even that only has 0.37% adoption. Outside of Windows, Linux holds a 1.92% share of gamers, and macOS accounts for 1.3%.

Windows 11 represented 46.63% of gamers on Steam in June, and 47.45% in July, and was increasing in jumps of a percentage point, or half a percent or so, in recent times – so this is a pretty big growth spurt for August.

Steam logo on a Windows 11 background

(Image credit: Microsoft / Valve)

Analysis: Sudden surge

We weren’t expecting Windows 11 to outgun Windows 10 quite so quickly, in short. Is there any particular reason for the sudden surge? None that springs to mind, though it could just be that the need to move from Windows 10 is feeling a bit more pressing now there’s not much more than a year left before the older operating system reaches its End of Life (in October 2025).

If you look solely at Windows versions on Steam, Windows 11 now holds just a touch over 50% of that market now.

Sadly for Microsoft, this progress isn’t remotely reflected outside of the world of gaming. For overall users, according to Statcounter, Windows 11 is on 31.6% for August, compared to 64.1% for Windows 10, so the latter still has double the headcount of the former – it’s not even close.

Microsoft will be hoping that overall picture changes radically over the next year, that’s for sure – and AI will be a big part of that drive, wrapped up with Copilot+ PCs which are predicted to do big things in terms of shifting units.