McKinsey & Company has published a new report, "Gaming's next growth era: Unlocking the value of attention," arguing that the games industry's next phase of expansion hinges on how companies capture, measure and monetize player attention rather than on raw user acquisition.

The report's title signals a shift in how one of the most influential consultancies in corporate gaming is framing the sector's strategic conversation. Where recent industry analyses focused on consolidation, live-service economics and the mobile market's post-IDFA reckoning, McKinsey now places attention itself — the finite resource players spend across games, video, social platforms and other entertainment — at the center of the growth question.

For studios and publishers, the framing carries operational weight. Gaming competes for the same hours that consumers allocate to streaming video, short-form social content and other interactive media. A report that defines attention as the core unit of value suggests McKinsey sees competitive pressure coming less from rival titles and more from the broader entertainment ecosystem.

What does the 'value of attention' framing change?

The core implication for game businesses is measurement. If attention is the currency, then engagement metrics — session length, retention curves, cross-platform play patterns — become the primary indicators of a title's commercial health, ahead of install counts or one-time purchase revenue.

That logic maps onto monetization mechanics the industry already operates:

• Live-service models, where revenue scales with sustained engagement rather than units sold
• Battle passes and season structures, designed to convert recurring attention into recurring spend
• In-game advertising and rewarded formats, which monetize attention directly on mobile and increasingly on other platforms
• Cross-media strategies, where a game's audience attention is extended into film, merchandise and adjacent products

McKinsey's decision to publish on this theme now also reflects timing. The games market has moved past the pandemic-era surge and the subsequent correction. Layoffs and studio closures through 2023 and 2024 forced publishers to defend existing player bases rather than chase new ones. A growth thesis built on attention is, in effect, a thesis about extracting more value from audiences the industry already has.

Why should studios care about a consultancy's framing?

Consultancy reports rarely move markets on their own, but they shape how executives and investors talk. McKinsey's analyses circulate widely in boardrooms and in the investor decks of publicly traded publishers. When the firm argues that gaming's growth era is defined by attention, that language tends to filter into strategy documents, earnings-call commentary and M&A rationales.

For mid-sized studios, the practical read is that platform holders, publishers and acquirers will likely keep emphasizing engagement-heavy portfolios: games with durable retention, cross-platform reach and monetization systems that reward long-term play. Single-purchase premium titles remain viable, but the growth narrative that McKinsey is advancing sits squarely with service games and attention-based revenue models.

For advertising-adjacent businesses, the report's framing is more directly commercial. In-game advertising has been one of the industry's slower-developing revenue lines outside mobile, held back by measurement standards and brand-safety concerns. A McKinsey endorsement of attention as the core value unit could add momentum to ad-supported models across console and PC, where free-to-play titles with large engaged audiences present inventory that brands have historically underused.

What to watch next

The report's arrival coincides with a broader industry conversation about where growth actually comes from after two difficult years. Publishers have already been restructuring around fewer, bigger, longer-lived titles; platform holders are investing in subscription services and ad-supported tiers; and mobile developers continue adapting to privacy-driven changes in user acquisition economics.

Watch whether the "value of attention" framing appears in upcoming earnings guidance from major publishers — particularly in how they justify live-service investments, in-game advertising expansion or cross-media spending. If McKinsey's thesis takes hold, expect engagement metrics to feature more prominently in how publicly traded game companies present their results to investors.