Neowin

Last month, Valve's monthly hardware survey of its Steam users for November 2012 showed that the percentage of its Windows 8 owners had already overtaken Steam's Mac users. This week, Valve updated its hardware survey for the month of December 2012 and once again showed Windows 8 gaining among its hardcore PC audience.

The stats on the hardware survey page shows that the percentage of Windows 8 owners (combining 32-bit and 64-bit SKUs) stands at 6.93 percent, well above the 4.69 percent of Windows 8 users that Steam recorded in November 2012. Windows Vista users of Steam in December (again combining 32-bit and 64-bit) totaled 6.96 percent of Steam users. Yes, that means Vista outnumbers Windows 8 by just .03 percent.

It's also clear that the vast majority of Windows 8 users, at least those using Steam, have installed the 64-bit SKU. Just 0.60 percent of Steam users are using the 32-bit version. Windows 8 64-bit users are now the fourth biggest group of Steam users when broken down by individual SKUs.

This is the first month on Steam's hardware survey that we have seen stats for Linux Ubuntu users, which are currently participating in an open beta test. As you might expect, the total number of Ubuntu users on Steam is still quite small. The combined total percentage stands at 0.80 percent.

Windows 7 users of Steam are now 70.47 percent of all Steam owners, down from 72.56 percent from the month before. Windows XP is still being used by 10.44 percent of Steam owners and the combined number of Mac Steam owners is currently at 3.72 percent.

Source: Steam | Image via Valve

Represent!

This is pretty disappointing given that Valve gave away Portal to everyone who downloaded Steam for Mac when it was first announced.  Marketing-wise, they've done a great job in promoting Mac Steam and providing libraries for developers to go cross-platform.  On the other hand, Steam for Mac is still buggy as hell, and the vast majority of new games are still Windows-only.  If Mac support is such an uphill battle, then the Linux market will be hopeless (but I assume they're doing it to pave the way for a Linux-based Steam Box).

Yeah, it is. And half the games on Steam don't run on Mac. It's a drag. I think my next computer is going to be a PC though... I'll be glad when I don't have to worry about that anymore...

Totally not surprised Windows 8 is unnecessary, im still rocking it with my old Wxp

Lol. Windows 7 is still killing it, W8 is the new Vista.

B_E_L_I_E_V_E homeboy

So this means Windows 8 is even more d0med than the Vita?

In that case, I shall welcome our new Linux overlords.

Just four days ago there were articles about market research suggesting Windows 8 being at just 1.7 percent by the 22nd of December, pointing out that even the extremely unpopular Windows Vista gained more market share during the same period after its release, and saying that the data indicates Windows 8 growth is already slowing down.

But why do they come up with so different numbers? The difference between 1.7% and 6.9% is huge. Well, the 6.9% is based exclusively on people using Steam, while the 1.7% is based on internet browsing in general, which of course is far more representative for the whole population.

So the really interesting part about this Steam survey is that it indicates how unrepresentative such surveys by Valve actually are. But considering that according to Steam surveys, 93% of all Steam users are born January 1st, I guess they are just very, very special people!

The OS market is a nightmare to track.

These Steam-numbers are 100% accurate ... for Steam, therfore a pretty impressive increase.
Expect Steam users to be more into new tech than the regular facebook, youtube and Twitter - teen.