Steam Survey Results Start 2023 With Linux Marketshare Flat

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Survey Results Start 2023 With Linux Marketshare Flat

Valve has just published their Steam Survey results for the month of January. Apple macOS has eaten a tiny bit of marketshare from Windows while on a percentage basis there is no change for Linux...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-January-2023

[mSparks]

still waiting for the steam deck to land on store shelves here. not exactly surprising to see no change in the stats when they are basically impossible to buy still.

[bernstein]

Thanks to valve we now know that those 22% of those 1.36% are a bit over 1 million steam decks.

that gives us abou 3 million linux gamers besides the deck.

This conflicts with calculating absolute values from monthly active users…. So either that calculation is wrong or most steam decks run windows or sit around unused!

[ezst036]

Apparently AYANEO is also building its own Linux OS: (AYANEO OS)

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/0...ves-this-year/

So Valve will have a more direct SteamOS competitor in the Linux space if this materializes at retail.

[sarmad]

Interesting that Steam Deck market share is down among Linux users. So, more people switching to gaming on Linux than Steam Decks sold in January? That doesn't make sense to me. Either the hype for mobile gaming faded or there is some bug on the Steam Deck side preventing those surveys from showing in certain conditions.

[Almindor]

Interesting that Steam Deck market share is down among Linux users. So, more people switching to gaming on Linux than Steam Decks sold in January? That doesn't make sense to me. Either the hype for mobile gaming faded or there is some bug on the Steam Deck side preventing those surveys from showing in certain conditions.

I wonder if steam deck is a bit of a niche thing in the end. Well executed but not mainstream enough?

[Luke_Wolf]

Interesting that Steam Deck market share is down among Linux users. So, more people switching to gaming on Linux than Steam Decks sold in January? That doesn't make sense to me. Either the hype for mobile gaming faded or there is some bug on the Steam Deck side preventing those surveys from showing in certain conditions.

It's the steam hardware survey you shouldn't really expect much continuity between one data point to the next nor should you be trying to draw conclusions from fraction of percent differences it's at best useful for broad trends but not specific details.

[ids1024]

I wonder if steam deck is a bit of a niche thing in the end. Well executed but not mainstream enough?

Or we're simply still in the early days of the "handheld gaming PC". The Steam Deck has proven more compelling than previous devices like that. It could see more mainstream interest as the software gets polished more, developers show an increasing interest in being "Steam Deck verified", a new revision of the Steam Deck is released, other major manufactures show an interesting in making similar hardware, etc.

For a new class of hardware like this, it doesn't seem so unusual if the people who buy one in the first year are "early adopters", and it may become more mainstream later.

[lectrode]

My Steam Deck has completely replaced my aging gaming tower. It's great for games on the go, yet powerful enough to run many games (including Rocket League and GTA5) 1080p 60fps on an external display without issue. It doesn't have the raw uncapped fps that my gtx 970 had, but it has NONE of the stuttering, which is absolutely a game changer (likely due to pre-compiled shaders being provided for uniform hardware, amongst other tweaks).

I primarily use it docked with a PS5 controller, but whenever I know I'm going to be waiting somewhere, it comes with and I can play wherever I'm at. Truly a remarkable piece of hardware.

[bernstein]

The PS Vita has shown that even in a smartphone world there is a 20+ million market for gaming handhelds. The seitch proved its much bigger at 100+ million.
Given it’s access to the steam catalog the likely TAM for a steam hanheld is similar. Depends a lot on whether the can get developer support for most AAA releases, there will be a more portable/child/casuarl friendly steam handheld and when/if we see xbox/ps handhelds.

I for one am in the camp of recently switched to linux for gaming on the work laptop due to the success of the steam deck (and articles about the viability of proton/steamos).

In the near future using a GPD Win 4. while this will not replace my cheap diy gaming pc, it will complement it as the pc lays dormant for months when i don’t have the time for those sessions. Depending on how much proton improves, i’ll even migrate that to linux as well.