Valve has published stats regarding controller usage on Steam which they have been collecting since the advent of Steam Input three years ago. In a recent blog post, Valve details the data of which controller is the most popular on the Steam platform as well as which games are mostly played with controllers.
Not surprisingly, the Xbox One / Xbox 360 gamepad is the most popular controller with over 40 million users using it accounting for 64% of the total user base. With PS4 being the very popular console that it is and with Steam improving support for the controller, its easy to expect it’d be a close 2nd to active users but surprisingly, the Switch Pro holds has more users in last month’s data than the PS4 pad. In total cumulative usage though, PS4 controllers do hold the second spot behind the combined Xbox controllers with the PS3 pad coming in 3rd.
Steam is gathering these data to research how gamers interact with games via their gamepad and how customization plays a role in how they want to interact with games. While it might look like general info to most gamers, these data would help in creating a deeper understanding of game interaction and input preference which would allow Valve and game developers to create ideas to best create games and input devices that would offer the best experience in their games.
You can read the entire blog which also details Steam Controller data and other more details in the full blog post here: Controller Gaming in PC