According to data from Valve’s Steam Hardware and Software Survey for the month ending March 2014, Microsoft’s latest operating system usage has increased to a combined total of 23.03% for both Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. During the month of February, the usage was at a total of 22.14%. For the month of January, it was 21.31%. This factors in both 32bit and 64bit of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.
This data is collected by Valve’s Steam game client, for those that did not know, and measures hardware and software stats on a monthly basis. This data indicates how much share an operating system has (among other stats) when it comes to gaming via Steam. According to this data, Windows 8 32bit has a share of 0.48%, which is a 0.03% drop compared to the previous month. Windows 8 64bit had a share of 9.17%, which is a 0.28% drop compared to the previous month.
Windows 8.1 32bit went up by 0.01% with a 0.37% share, while Windows 8.1 64bit climbed up to 13.01%, with an increase of 1.19%. Windows 7 64bit, on the other hand, saw a 0.08% decrease to 50.47%.
Based on these stats, we can see that more gamers are upgrading to Windows 8.1. Although, the majority of gamers are still sticking with Windows 7. It also appears that all versions of Windows saw a decline in share, while only Windows 8.1 saw an increase.
Just recently, Net Applications released their stats for the month of March and Windows 8 saw a combined market share of 11.3% with Windows 8.1.