Microsoft has been trying to push Windows 10 for quite some time now in hopes that it eventually becomes the main Windows OS that people use. This marketing has applied to gamers as well with their recent push of the Windows Store as well as the Xbox Play Anywhere campaign.
Well it looks like they’re starting to make some headway with the gamer market as more than 50% of Steam users now use the operating system, according Steam’s latest hardware survey.
This is the operating system’s first major milestone since beating Windows 7 earlier last year as the most used Windows OS. At the time of this writing, 51.34% of Steam users use Windows 10.
Windows 10 Becomes Most Popular OS on Steam
So what exactly do these numbers mean for gamers?
Well for one, now that majority of Windows users use Windows 10, it’s possible that we start to see more widespread use of DirectX 12.
DirectX 12 is the latest version of the popular API that’s used in a lot of PC games. However, this version is exclusive only to Microsoft’s latest OS so it hasn’t seen too much use in mainstream titles.
Now that Windows 10 is slowly becoming the standard OS for PC users we might begin to see more developers and games use the new API.
In addition to the spread of DirectX 12, more people using Windows 10 also means more people having access to Microsoft’s Windows Store as well as Xbox integration.
While perhaps not a feature that many PC gamers see much value in, it’s still something relevant to the audience that owns both a Windows PC and an Xbox platform.
Likewise we might begin to see more traditional Xbox exclusives arrive to the PC through Microsoft’s Play Anywhere program.
Just this past year we saw both Gears of War and Forza arrive to the platform, both of which were formally Xbox exclusives.
Either way, it’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft will begin implementing even bigger changes and features to the Windows platform now that it’s become the primary OS on Steam.
