Compare twelve-month ownership cost and cost per usable game-month, not subscription price divided by an advertised catalogue count. Keep supplier charges separate from internal labour so management can see what drives the result.
Use this proposed model:
12-month TCO = setup + integration + recurring fees + usage charges + hosting/monitoring + internal operating time + external review + planned exit costs
Count internal time using the buyer’s actual loaded hourly costs and recorded or explicitly estimated hours. Keep contingency as a separate planning line rather than presenting it as expenditure already incurred.
For the denominator:
Usable game-months = sum of the qualifying catalogue count for each month
Cost per usable game-month = 12-month attributable cost ÷ usable game-months
A qualifying title should meet your relevance, rights, audience and operational acceptance rules. Maintain a separate count for unresolved eligibility.
Illustration only: US$24,000 of annual attributable cost divided by 2,400 usable game-months equals US$10 per usable game-month. This is arithmetic using assumed inputs, not a market benchmark.
Also model three buyer-specific scenarios:
- Normal expected traffic and catalogue coverage.
- Higher traffic with unchanged editorial value.
- Loss of an important studio or additional migration work.
For multi-supplier portfolios, deduplicate games and allocate shared costs consistently. Do not credit two suppliers with the same incremental coverage.