A few days ago, Matt Booty, the former head of Microsoft's Minecraft business, was promoted to Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios. As such, his previous position became vacant.
Shortly after the announcement, Redmond announced that Helen Chiang would be the new head of Minecraft. Chiang has worked at Microsoft for nine years and has overseen numerous operations during her tenure. She has worked with the Minecraft team for the past three years and knows them well.
In a telephone conversation with PopSugar's Chelsea Hassler, Chiang discussed her new role and revealed interesting details about the Minecraft franchise. When asked about future plans, she revealed the game's monthly active users by issuing the following statement.
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.
The report by PopSugar also mentioned that Minecraft has sold over 144 million copies across all devices. If accurate, this is not only a testament to the popularity of the title, but also the aggressive post-launch support Minecraft has received over the years. There's always a new event or content pack in the works.
Minecraft's popularity isn't limited to Microsoft's platforms like Xbox and Windows though, recently Nintendo revealed the best-selling Switch games and Minecraft took the top spot in Japan, which has been notoriously difficult for Microsoft in the past. Here's hoping that under Chiang's leadership the franchise will continue to reach new heights.
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