Gamers continue to adopt Windows 10 at a steady pace

Yesterday, for the first time in 2016 and the first time in almost three months, Microsoft confirmed  their latest momentum numbers for Windows 10 which was released in late July of last year.

We already know that Windows 10 has the ability to stream games from the Windows 10 based Xbox One console but what about PC gaming and Windows 10?

Anyone who has ever used their PC for gaming knows that one of the most important things we want is for the OS to stay out of the way as we play our games. This is why Windows XP was so popular with gamers and then Windows 7 behind it. Windows Vista on the other hand missed the mark because it tended to be such a resource hog.

So gamers can be a very good metric to see how well an operating system performs under gaming conditions and new December 2015 stats from Valve’s popular Steam gaming website show gamers are using Windows 10 more each month.

Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data about what kinds of computer hardware and software our customers are using. Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous. The information gathered is incredibly helpful to us as we make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer.

The key element of this survey is that it is optional and that means it is very likely that there are even more systems running the tracked operating systems because not everyone will opt into the hardware survey.

As of December 2015, Windows 7 accounts for 44.63% of all Windows systems on the service – this is a drop of about 1% compared to November. Windows 10 on the other hand is sitting at 34.03% which is an increase of 2.69% since November.

Windows 8/8.1 is sitting at 18.55%, Windows XP is down at 2.28% and Windows Vista is barely registering at just under one half of a percentage point.

When you add stats like this to the numbers Microsoft revealed yesterday it shows that Windows 10 is quickly becoming a large chunk of the Windows install base.  Of course, the free upgrade offer is playing a big role in this initial adoption and that cannot be totally ignored. It will be interesting to see what kind of spike we see as the free upgrade offer comes to its conclusion in late July 2016 and then how that continues once users must pay for the upgrade.

At CES this year it looks like a lot of OEMs will be introducing either upgraded systems or new form factors running Windows 10 so those systems will continue to add to the adoption rate as well as fewer systems running Windows 7/8/8.1 are being offered on retail shelves.

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