Neowin

While Net Applications gives an idea about how Windows 8 is doing from a more general PC audience, the tens of millions of Steam users show how the operating system is being accepted by the more hardcore PC gaming crowd. Today, the latest Steam hardware survey results are in for the month of February 2013 and it shows that Windows 8 is now ahead of Windows XP among its user base.

The new survey results show that a total of 9.63 percent of Steam users (combining 32-bit and 64-bit SKUs) have Windows 8 installed on their gaming rig, compared to 8.76 percent in January 2013. Windows XP is still being used by 9.33 percent of Steam subscribers, down from the 10.05 percent that it had in January.

Windows 7 is still the top dog among PC operating systems on Steam. The February survey numbers show that it commands 69.31 percent of Steam users, but that's still lower compared to the 69.73 percent in had in January. Windows Vista users of Steam in February totaled a mere 5.84 percent, down from 6.02 percent in January, as the seldom-seen OS' share continues to slowly dwindle.

The combined number of Mac Steam owners is currently at 3.07 percent, down from 3.56 percent in January. There are quite a few versions of Linux showing up in February's Steam survey, but adding them all up shows that they total just 2.02 percent of Steam users.

Source: Steam

Windows XP is being used in less than 10% of the PCs? I thought it had more marketshare.

Vista just will not leave us alone!! It would be interesting to see a Vista fan boy....

It's good seeing it grow. My bro just picked it up and likes it. He says it's basically windows 7 with a few more features and it runs games more efficiently.

Other? Windows 98 plus?

ironmanDX said: Other? Windows 98 plus?

Yeah thats quite strange considering Steam isn't compatible with anything below WinXP. Dunno what it could be. 

PS4 maybe? 8GB of RAM became most popular config this month. It all makes sense now...

It's my fault, I uninstalled Steam from my win xp laptop.
Now it only counts me for Win 7.

Well there aint no way that im switching to Windows 8! they'll have to take me kicking and screaming!

So they're saying that PC gamers hate Vista and are slow to adopt the very smartphone-ish looks of Windows 8? What else is new.

They are saying they hate Vista and are adopting Windows 8 faster than rest of the population. Over 2X faster than latest internet traffic for Windows 8 appears to be at 3%.

I have some issues with the latest internet traffic data though. I have access to Google analytics data for 100s of sites which can track data based on operating system.

Business related sites have virtually 0% windows 8 traffic. However Entertainment sites are higher (around 7-8%). I think this shows where Windows 8 adoption is headed. Growth is more towards home users and entertainemnt PCs, while business is standing firm on Windows 7.