{"id":5886,"date":"2014-01-06T08:22:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T22:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/?p=5886"},"modified":"2014-01-06T08:22:38","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T22:22:38","slug":"windows-8-adoption-rate-strong-amongst-pc-gamers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/2014\/01\/06\/windows-8-adoption-rate-strong-amongst-pc-gamers\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows 8 Adoption Rate Strong Amongst PC Gamers."},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret that my preferred gaming platform is the PC and the platform I run on top of that is Microsoft Windows. Whilst OSX and Linux might be gaining more momentum as of late they’re still quite far behind in terms of support from major titles, with the indie scene being the catalyst that’s driving them forward. With the introduction of SteamOS<\/a>\u00a0though Valve signalled that they had lost confidence in the Windows platform to deliver the same gaming experience<\/a> as it had done for decades previously, predominately due to the changes that came in with Windows 8 and the WinRT platform.\u00a0\u00a0This is where I and Gabe Newell start to disagree and if the latest numbers are anything to go by so do a good chunk of his customers.<\/p>\n

\"Steam<\/a>The Steam Hardware Survey<\/a> is a monthly data collection that Valve does through Steam to give an overview of the current trends in PC gaming. The results are a great insight into what gamers are using to play their games and is a great source of information for developers and pundits alike. The December 2013 results show a trend that even I didn’t think would be possible: a staggering 20% of Steam’s user base is now on Windows 8 \u00a0or 8.1 64 bit. Compared to wider PC adoption rates this is even more impressive as it’s less than half of that of Steam users<\/a>. Whilst I wouldn’t go as far to say that these figures should change Gabe’s mind (and indeed I believe he should stay the course with SteamOS) it does call into question the reasoning behind his recent musings about Windows as a gaming platform.<\/p>\n

Another interesting titbit of information buried in the survey is that the fastest growing platform by far is Windows 8.1. Whilst it’s arguable that this is likely due to the improvements made in 8.1 (like the return of the start bar and the straight to desktop mode) I think it’s far more likely because this is the first Windows update that’s been made freely available to end users. Indeed it’s kind of hard to avoid upgrading to it as Windows will nag you every so often about it and since the update is completely non-destructive there’s really no barrier to getting the upgrade past a few hours. Still a raw increase of 2.5% of market share in a month is quite impressive and shows that Microsoft has done something right with its release.<\/p>\n

I think it’s clear that Windows is still a very viable platform for gaming, even with Microsoft’s big push for things to start going the WinRT way. I’ve always been of the stance that the traditional desktop isn’t going to go anywhere, even in the face of tablets and other touch devices taking a bigger slice of the market that PCs used to occupy, and it seems a good chunk of the gaming community agrees with that idea. I’m sure Microsoft is also keenly aware of how much revenue the gaming community brings to them and how much of that is due to Steam so it’d be very surprising to see them do anything to push them away from the Windows platform.<\/p>\n

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It’s no secret that my preferred gaming platform is the PC and the platform I run on top of that is Microsoft Windows. Whilst OSX…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[1239,1164,475,3772,474,2324,4710],"class_list":["post-5886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games","tag-linux","tag-platform","tag-steam","tag-steamos","tag-valve","tag-windows-8","tag-windows-8-1"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Steam-Hardware-Survey-December-2013.jpg?fit=951%2C438&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppBqt-1wW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therefinedgeek.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}