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New head of Minecraft at Microsoft Helen Chiang revealed that the sandbox hit has reached a new milestone last December, with now 74m players returning to the game every month, which is more than half of all the players who own a copy of the title. Minecraft has sold 144m units to date across 12 platforms.
Talking to entertainment publication PopSugar, Chiang said: "We just recently set a new record in December for monthly active users, so now we’re at 74 million monthly active users — and that’s really a testament to people coming back to the game, whether it’s through the game updates or bringing in new players from across the world. That’s really our goal, to keep building the community that we have."
Recently appointed following the promotion of Matt Booty to corporate vice president of Microsoft Studios, Chiang also said of her new role: "Life is too short to not work on something fun… and I [want to] build a place where everyone in the studio is empowered and enabled to do their best work. We have amazing artists, and designers, and engineers — and really, my job is to make sure that we’re building the right environment for them to go do their best work."
Minecraft Head of Communications Aubrey Norris added: "The Minecraft franchise has never been stronger, and Helen’s amazing work and thoughtful leadership have been instrumental to our success as a global Minecraft team. She is so inspiring to me as a woman in games and a mother — she proves to people like me that we can run a major games studio and be a wonderful mom."
