As one month ends and another has begun we are again treated to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey. Often there are interesting trends to be seen in this survey concerning OS market shares, and what tech spec configurations and component brands are in the ascendency.
In the latest survey, covering the month ending March 31st, there are a few key milestones passed. The most important milestone is, of course, the one you can see in the headline. Windows 10 (64-bit) is now more popular among Steam users than the old favourite Windows 7 (64-bit). Yes, this milestone is 64-bit only, as you can see from the screenshot of the OS charts below. Going forward, it looks like a very large percentage of AAA PC games will be 64-bit, with only a few 32-bit exceptions to that rule.
Steam users often crave newer hardware and software than the average PC user, as modern action games popular on the platform benefit from the newest, latest and greatest spec components you can afford. This means that trends shown in the Steam surveys are a little ahead of the general PC market but a good sign of things to come.
While on the topic of Steam platform OS market shares, the various flavours of Windows hold 95.7 per cent of the market, Mac OS X users are next with 3.32 per cent and Linux grabs just 0.85 per cent of the share. As reported by Phoronix, Linux is down from 0.95 per cent in January. The Linux share is likely more to do with the growth of Steam in general, with most new users having Windows PCs, rather than Linux users switching platform. The same source also notes that SteamOS/Steam Big Picture Mode users aren't currently prompted to sign up and take part in the Steam survey.
