According to the stats from Valve’s Steam Hardware and Software Survey for the month ending September 2014, Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 are powering a combined 28.96% of all the computers, up from 27.81% from a month earlier.
For those who aren’t familiar, Valve’s Steam is a gaming client, which much like Net Applications, also analyzes hardware and software stats on a monthly basis. But unlike Net Applications which tracks internet traffic for determining the operating system’s share, Valve only factors in users who are playing through its gaming client. This often results in contradicting reports. But now you know, why that happens.
According to the latest stats, only 0.41% users, down from 0.43%, are running the 32bit Windows 8 to play games on Steam. Similarly, 7.57% (down from 7.86% from a month earlier) Steam users are using the 64bit Windows 8. Clearly both the Windows 8 versions have suffered slight drops in their share.
Moving forward, 0.53% Steam users are using Windows 8.1 32bit operating system, up from 0.51% from a month earlier. Among Windows 8.x series, Windows 8.1 64bit has maintained the top spot, now being used by 20.45%, up by 1.44% since last month.
Among other operating systems, Windows 7 64-bit has maintained the top spot, which despite of the drop of 0.35%, is still used by 47.73%. Similarly, the share of 32bit Windows 7 has also slid, now settled at 1.66%, down by 0.17% since last month.
Further reading: Steam, Windows 8, Windows 8.1
