PC Gamers Approve Windows 7 [Steam's Monthly Hardware Survey Shows PC Gamers Quickly Adapting Win7]

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Gaming platform Steam collects all sorts of metrics on their users, including taking automated hardware surveys of their users computers. They say this information helps them (Valve, their parent company) as game developers, and they often release this information to the public. The results for January 2010 are in, and the gaming crowd are adapting Windows 7 surprisingly fast.

Steam’s hardware survey isn’t a perfect vertical slice of all computer users, or even of all gaming users, but it is an accurate sampling of a very large number of PC gamers. Almost 29% of Steam users are using some flavor of Windows 7. Windows 7 has only been out for three months, and it’s surpassed Windows Vista (which scored 28%) which has been out for three years.

This pretty much sums up Windows Vista’s entire history. While I believe some of its unpopularity was simply fabricated by bad press (and a certain company in Cupertino, California), it did have its share of problems (especially at first), and was very resource intensive.

Now, this news shouldn’t be taken purely on face value. If you think about it, gamers who want to be on the cutting edge would have adapted Vista quickly, and then would have quickly adapted to Windows 7, which is one explanation why Windows 7 has quickly overtaken Windows Vista. It should be worth nothing that nine year-old (but reliable… relatively) Windows XP still is used by the majority of Steam gamers (with 43% using WinXP).

A few other interesting trends that are notable – less than 1% of Steam users currently use the 64-bit version of WinXP, but about 29% of Vista users are using 64-bit systems, and 67% of Win7 users are using 64-bit systems. I remember when you had to have a ‘specialized processor’ to use a 64-bit system. Now, 99% (or it seems like it, anyway) of new computers sold come with a 64-bit ready processor and people are adapting likewise.