Windows 10 adoption accelerates while Windows Mixed Reality makes inroads on Steam

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Windows 10 has become the clear favorite operating system of the gamers who take part in Steam’s hardware survey, and is fast approaching a 60% market share – not far off twice Windows 7’s share – while Windows Mixed Reality headsets are continuing to make inroads on the virtual reality front.

According to Valve’s stats for June, Windows 10 has accelerated up to 57.38%, a fairly sizeable leap of 1.51% compared to the previous month.

Windows 7 went in the other direction, shedding 1.26% to leave it on a market share of 34.31%. So, you could look at it this way: just a swing of another few percentage points of those users migrating to Windows 10 will see Microsoft’s newest OS hit 60%, and Windows 7 drop to 30%, which will be a major milestone.

If something like the current rate of transition continues, that might only take a few months to happen.

Meanwhile, for June’s figures, Windows 8 versions captured a total of 4.49% share, with Windows XP now close to vanishing on 0.23% (thankfully).

Mixing things up

Virtual reality still isn’t a big thing for PC gamers, at least going by the denizens of Steam, because only 0 .7% of the users surveyed have a VR headset – but that said, it’s interesting to see that Windows Mixed Reality headsets are continuing to perform better.

Microsoft’s headsets have now captured 6.25% of the VR-using population on Steam, which isn’t a huge amount, but it does represent a decent spurt of growth since the start of the year (when we witnessed adoption levels of 4.4%).

The leading headset is the Oculus Rift on 46.26%, with the HTC Vive close behind on 44.56% (so the vast majority of the niche of virtual reality addicts are still using these main two headsets).

It’s a good bet that later this year, we will see some more compelling offers on Windows Mixed Reality hardware – as there are a number of competing devices in this space from various manufacturers – and that could help to stoke sales further. As to when overall adoption of VR headsets will kick up a gear, that’s another, entirely thornier, question…

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Via Neowin

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