Three Years After Its Release, Windows 11 Finally Surpasses Windows 10 as the Most Popular PC Gaming Operating System
Brook.X
In 2012, Microsoft skipped Windows 9 and directly launched Windows 10, claiming it to be the last version of Windows, with subsequent updates to be released annually based on Windows 10.
However, in October 2021, Microsoft officially released Windows 11, a new system based on the design of Windows 10 but with significant UI changes, receiving mixed reviews. At least for gamers, this was not good news due to its poorer stability and lag issues.
Most gamers did not opt for Windows 11, as it had various strange problems, such as intermittent lag, which is particularly unfavorable for gamers. Thus, on the Steam gaming platform, most gamers continued to use Windows 10.
This situation changed after three years of Windows 11's release. According to the operating system statistics published by Steam for August, Windows 11 has surpassed Windows 10 to become the most popular PC gaming operating system.
In August 2024, Windows 10 held a market share of 47.09%, a decrease of 3.07% from the previous month, while Windows 11 had a market share of 49.17%, an increase of 3.36%. Other operating systems like macOS and Linux saw little change.
This was somewhat expected, similar to how a large number of users continued using Windows 7 and Windows 8 when Windows 10 was released, with Windows 10 also experiencing poor stability initially and gradually stabilizing over subsequent updates.
Now, Windows 11 has followed a similar path, with its stability gradually improving over three years of updates. More importantly, new laptops no longer come with the option to pre-install Windows 10, which has rapidly increased the market share of Windows 11.
By October of next year, Windows 10 will end mainstream security support, prompting many users to gradually switch to Windows 11—even if their hardware does not support Windows 11, they will need to find a way to upgrade. As time goes on, some games and platforms will start discontinuing support for Windows 10.
