There are now more VR gamers on Steam than Linux gamers

2019 continues to show to be the biggest year in VR's history, and one Twitter user pointed out that VR recently passed a rather interesting set of milestones. Windows has long been the Bone of choice for PC gamers on Steam, with MacOS and Linux trailing far behind. While there has been an ebb and flow in the number of users on each of these platforms, VR has continued to grow and now sports double the number of users of Linux and nearly as many every bit MacOS.

Earlier we get too far into the numbers though, it's worth noting that the Steam monthly hardware survey is an optional survey that's sent out to a random pool of users, and participation in the survey is bearding. This optional nature means at that place'due south always going to be a percentage of gamers that don't reply or who don't fill out all the fields. The random nature too means that the information generated is non a completely accurate look at the entire pool of active Steam gamers.

With that said, statistical trends are fun and there's a definite correlation to the data we see in the January 2022 Steam hardware survey and the fact that the Valve Index, Oculus Rift S, and Oculus Quest have all been backordered for some fourth dimension. Looking at the January 2022 Steam numbers in more detail, only 0.9% of respondents stated that they use Linux as their main OS, while three.01% of users were on MacOS.

Compared with these more niche OS platforms, VR gamers fabricated up i.31% of respondents. That's the highest number always recorded, and a 0.22% bump over Dec 2022'southward numbers. The largest jump is seen past the Oculus Rift Southward, with a 0.11% increase in user base from December 2022, only it's well worth noting that the Oculus Quest shows up as an Oculus Rift S when connected through Oculus Link, which could very well skew these numbers quite a bit.

While the Oculus Rift S and Oculus Quest are the same price ($399), the Oculus Quest represents the best value in VR as information technology tin can likewise be played anywhere without the demand to tether information technology to a PC. It's important to note that exact statistics cannot exist accurately extracted from an optional, random survey, only they do stand for an of import growth metric leading upward to large 2022 VR releases like Half-Life: Alyx.

Quality VR for less

Oculus Rift S

Roomscale without the extra hardware

The Oculus Rift S is one of the nigh affordable ways to get into PC-powered VR, and it'southward a much less complicated setup than many other PC-powered VR solutions. Get all of SteamVR and Oculus with a single headset.

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An internet connection will soon be required when setting up Windows 11 Pro

UH OH

An internet connection will soon be required when setting up Windows xi Pro

Microsoft has appear that later this year, users will be required to connect to the internet and sign-in with a Microsoft Account during the out of box setup feel on Windows 11 Pro. Microsoft has already been enforcing this requirement on Windows 11 Home since launch last Oct, and Windows 11 Pro is at present expected to follow adapt soon.