Windows 11 fails to impress Steam users
Yesterday we took a look at some comparative benchmarking tests on identical PCs with one running Windows 10 and the other running Windows 11. The results showed that there was not a significant performance upgrade attached to the newer operating system. Today, we are reporting on some more bad news for Windows 11, this time relating to gaming, although in the context of the results from yesterday’s benchmarking, it might not come as too much of a surprise.
Windows 11 has failed to impress Steam users, according to the latest data from Valve's voluntary survey on the PC configurations of its customers. However, in fairness to Microsoft’s newest flagship operating system, the survey, which helps developers optimize their games and make informed decisions on technology investments, is optional and therefore does not represent all Steam users.
According to the data, in December 2022, Windows 11 had a market share of 28.42%, which marks an increase of 0.44% compared to November 2022. While this may seem like a positive growth, it is worth noting that Windows 10 64-bit remains the most dominant operating system used by gamers on Steam, with a market share of 65.42%, down just 0.18% from last month.
There are still Steam users gaming on older Windows operating systems too. Windows 7 64-bit, which is the third most popular Windows version on Steam, also saw a decline, with a market share of 1.66%, a decrease of 0.22%. Windows 8 64-bit and Windows 7 32-bit had market shares of 0.41% and 0.11% respectively.
Overall, Microsoft's family of Windows operating systems continues to dominate the Steam gaming market, with a market share of 96.15%, an increase of 0.04%. Apple's operating systems came in second place with a market share of 2.48%, an increase of 0.03%. Linux came in third with a market share of 1.38%, marking a decrease of 0.06% from the previous month.
It is clear that while Windows 11 may be seeing some growth in terms of market share, it is not impressing Steam users as much as its predecessor, Windows 10. This is reflected in the fact that Windows 10 remains the most dominant operating system on the platform, despite experiencing a slight decline, maintaining market domination numbers similar to those enjoyed by Google Chrome in the web browser market.
It will be interesting to see how Windows 11 performs in future surveys and whether it is able to close the gap on Windows 10. Until then, it seems that Steam users are sticking with what they know and trust, particularly when they are not likely to see any real type of improved performance if they make the switch to Windows 11.
When a snake-oil salesman like Panos and an oxygen-depraved person like Satya are in power, this what happens. Every single aspect of Windows 11 is flawed. Version 11 is a significant downgrade for everyone and completely unnecessary. To make Windows 11 usable, we need to patch in just about every feature from 10. Instead of removing functionality and creating artificial hardware restrictions to advertise new hardware, giving Windows 10 the new design of Windows 11 would have been sufficient enough.
I agree winn 11 is pos. I’ve built many computers starting with MSdos and up. For win 11 I built a new gaming computer. worked great at first but then the bsod happened every other day. Many stop code errrors among the crashes. Win 11 will auto reboot and work fine after each crash.Of course whatever you doing will be lost. Recently I added more memory a total of 64 GB and the computer stopped crashing. I dont know if that had anything to do with or was it the updates from MS. But I’m still sticking with it . Win 10 was terrible at first too. In gaming I’m still killing it with Win11 intel I-5 12600K, msi pro Z690 MB,Corsair DDR4-3600 64GB, and my old but awesome 1080ti 11 GB. Overall win 11 improved with time but still is needs major improvement.
Windows 11 is a UI refresh of Windows 10 with unneeded hardware requirements. Why bother?
And the most emphasized selling point for Windows 11 was that it was much faster, especially for games.
Not mentioning all the troubles with stability up to now.
It’s not Windows 11, it’s Windows in general since Windows 8.
Vista was poorly marketed that it would run on old hardware when it could not so it received bad name even though it was a good OS, but since Windows 7, people were so happy with it that they were excited to install new versions of Windows as soon as they released.
Then Windows 8 released and it was a POS.
Then Windows 10 released and it was a POS, but a less POS than Windows 8.
Then Windows 11 released and it was a POS, on the same level as Windows 10 but for different things.
How can people be excited about Windows in general anymore when they have been getting POS since 2012? That’s 10 years of POS. People are just sticking to Windows 10, because it more or less works and they can’t be bothered to upgrade to Windows 11 if they don’t have to. Also the Windows 11 TPM requirement (although bypassable) is still a “paywall” so-to-speak for some people who don’t know they can bypass it or don’t want to. They have to buy new computers in order to get Windows 11.
I only use Windows 11 for the rounded edges and being less ugly than Windows 8 and Windows 10. But it’s a POS and I admit it, it doesn’t get any better, just worse. I am on my last few games and once I’m done with them, I might consider switching to Linux and if I want to game, I will try doing it there.
So Windows 11 is not popular, because of the trend of retardation that Microsoft started in 2012 with Windows 8 and keep at it, or maybe it’s a philosophy – they think they know what their users want and need and they impose it upon them without question. So unless Microsoft gets their act together, which I doubt they do, since they are the monopoly of the desktop market, people will always be doubtful and skeptic towards new versions of Windows.
@Jek Porkins +1, and here in my house we can see what you wrote at your comment. My father has W7 and we all are just fascinated about the idea of when it will broke. Sincerely, sometimes we talk about about the fact that an old laptop are doing mostly the 75% of the “family work” here. W7 is able to reproduce any kind of movie with no glitches (yes, it really can, even we see Bluray). With W11 my sister found glitches with the *.mkv formats, my W10 is unable to reproduce fluently the 1080 botanical documentaries that can be seen normally even in Linux. Furthermore my father is doing now in his old W7 laptop the 2022’s Christmas video easily. Perhaps we are expecting too many better things from Microsoft when they can’t release even a good f****** taskbar.
I don’t think anyone has high expectations for Windows from Microsoft anymore after 10 years of garbage. The top brass in the company has to change and the current CEO is focused on cloud computing and internet of things, which brings more money than selling copies of Windows. Windows since maybe 8 or 10 can be used without activation and Microsoft never added any prevention for illegal activation of Windows since XP which is when I started paying attention to these things. I think part of their business is collecting user data from Windows and making money from with so I might go and say that they are more than happy for pirates to illegally activate their Windows copies since Microsoft will make more money out of their data than from forcing them to buy a copy of Windows.
I don’t even know if Windows 11 ships with physical copies anymore at this point.
The sad part is that Microsoft is sabotaging older versions of Windows with updates that make them run worse so that it prompts people to upgrade to the newer versions. There is proof that versions of Windows 7 that have not received updates beyond 2011 are more stable and perform better than versions of Windows 7 that kept getting updates after that point.
When Windows 8 users found out a way to copy over the Windows 7 Start Menu files on Windows 8 and get a working Start Menu, Microsoft was quick to release a patch to make this trick stop working.
Windows 10 paved the way to force online-only account creation for Windows and Windows 11 solidified it with first forcing the Home edition to require online connection, now after 22H2, all versions of Windows 11 require online connection to create an account. People have to use tricks to bypass this or create a Windows 11 image through Rufus just to avoid these requirements. Which are stupid, because if somewhere a work computer is used but without internet connection, if something fails and Windows 11 has to be reinstalled, under no normal means could the installation be completed an an account created unless there is internet connection.
There are so many scenarios that portray how stupid this requirement is, but as I said Microsoft are a monopoly in the desktop market so they will do what they want. The sad part is people will still use Windows and comply with these requirements.
@Jef Porkins, I agree again. +10
W11 failed to impress everybody. Thanks for the article.