PC gamers are staying loyal to Windows 10 as opposed to Windows 11, nearly three years on from its release.
The latest Steam hardware and software survey, released in July, revealed that Windows 11 saw a drop in use, falling below 46%. That marks a decline of 0.82% since June. On the other hand, Windows 10 is holding strong, with an increase of 0.74% and taking 50.16% of users.
However, PC gamers’ preferences may not be catered to for much longer. Microsoft is expected to stop providing technical support, security updates, and feature updates for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, leaving a little over a year left for strong Windows 10 performance (although you can pay for an extension on that). Windows 11 is expected to overtake Windows 10 before that time.
Gaming performance is largely the same across both operating systems, although Windows 10 does offer better performance in part, thanks to its core isolation feature, as opposed to enabling memory integrity by default as on Windows 11. Some reason for people’s reticence to move across to Windows 11 could lie more in habit, rather than actual performance, with people preferring to stick with what they know.
Microsoft did include some features on Windows 11 designed to cater to gamers, including Auto HDR to help improve the look of older games, DirectStorage to optimize data transfer between the hard drive and GPU, dynamic lighting, a controller bar, and a dedicated gaming tab.
Nonetheless, some gamers maintain that Windows 11 doesn’t deliver on performance over Windows 10, despite being the newer operating system. When it comes to frames per second (FPS) performance, for example, high graphically intensive games like Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 2024, Cyberpunk 2077, and Rainbow 6 Siege have been known to perform better on Windows 10 than 11.
Regardless, the choice will likely soon be removed. Next year will mark ten years since Windows 10 was released and the end of support for the operating system, despite petitions for this to be delayed.
Featured image: Flickr, licensed under CC BY 2.0
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