Recently, Sony's management has ushered in a series of reshuffles. Hardware tycoon Hideaki Nishino was promoted to PlayStation CEO, while interim helmsman Hiroki Totoki officially became the top leader of Sony Group.

Tao Lin, a former Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) executive, was also promoted to core management as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).During her first earnings call, she mentioned some changes in the company since its executive adjustment.

Speaking of the gaming department, she said: "In the past, we were focusing on hardware shipments (sell-in units), but now we value monthly active users (MAUs). She emphasized that management is now focusing on user engagement and monthly active users, because this is directly related to profitability.

Sony's monthly active users have been growing steadily over the years, with more people playing PlayStation than ever before.During the Christmas holiday last year, the peak monthly active users exceeded 129 million. Although it dropped slightly to 124 million in the latest quarter, it still increased year-on-year.

The current game industry is no longer a "buy it and finish it". Games like "Fortnite", "Rob Less" and "Genshin Impact" are encouraging players to continue spending money.Sony makes more money from microtransactions than ever before, so their logic is simple: the more people play, the more people spend money.

High user engagement can also drive sales of high-end PS Plus subscriptions, controllers and other accessories.In other words, although it is still important to sell the console to players, this is just the starting point of every player's consumption journey.

Tao Lin is not clear about how to further improve monthly active users, but she mentioned that the installation volume of PS5 will continue to grow, and "many users" will be the new face of the PlayStation ecosystem.She also pointed out that unlike past generations of consoles, many players are still using PS4, which has also contributed a lot to monthly active users.

Inferioring that porting games to PC platforms and even increasing the popularity of the PlayStation brand by making movies and TV series should also help achieve their goals.

In addition, Tao Lin also mentioned that Sony is already better controlling the development expenditure of first-party games and will continue to optimize this aspect in the future.