Minecraft crosses 144 million sales and 74 million monthly active players

Following the appointment of Matt Booty as Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios last week, Microsoft already found someone to fill the shoes of the former head of Minecraft. Say Hello to Helen Chiang, a nine-year Xbox veteran who will now lead one of the most popular gaming franchises worldwide.

Many thanks for the warm welcome! I’m thrilled and truly honored to have the opportunity to serve as a steward for one of the most beloved franchises of all time. Thank you all for your support! ☺️ https://t.co/woTGIdXTT2

— Helen Chiang (@Pr1ncessP1ggy) January 17, 2018

In a phone interview with PopSugar last week, the new Minecraft recently revealed new hard data about the massively popular sandbox game (via Windows Central). Developer Mojang has now sold 144 million copies of Minecraft across all platforms, and the game now has 74 million monthly active players:

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,” Chiang told me. “That’s really our goal, to keep building the community that we have.

This is a new milestone for the game that officially launched back in November 2011. Chiang doesn’t plan to change Mojang’s success formula, but the new Minecraft boss will be focused on three areas this year: bringing the Bedrock engine to the Nintendo Switch version of the game, delivering the upcoming Aquatic update and the Superduper graphics pack. “They’re all areas that I’m really excited about and that the team is working very hard on,” explained Chiang.

Further reading: Microsoft, Minecraft, Mojang, Video Games