Every location-based entertainment (LBE) game hits the same fork. List it openly across every content platform that will carry it, keep more of each play, and hope enough venues actually switch it on — or hand one platform exclusivity, get guaranteed rollout across their whole network, and accept a thinner slice of a bigger number.
Most studios argue about this with instinct. This free calculator settles it with arithmetic. Enter your own venue counts, adoption rates, and deal terms, and it models both paths side by side. Built by Bob Cooney, a VR consultant working on go-to-market strategy for VR and location-based entertainment.
One formula runs both sides:
Your revenue = venues × adoption rate × plays per active venue per month × your revenue per play
The two paths differ in what you plug in, not in how it’s computed. Open distribution usually means more venues reachable but a much lower share of them running your title, at better per-play terms. Exclusive usually means a smaller defined universe, far higher penetration inside it, at worse per-play terms. The calculator finds where those two lines cross.
Venues reachable (open) — the total universe of locations your game could appear in if you list it everywhere. Not the number that will run it.
Venues in the platform (exclusive) — the size of the single partner’s network. A known, contractual number, which is exactly why exclusive deals feel safer.
Adoption (open) — the share of reachable venues that actually turn your game on. This is the number studios overestimate most, and it’s the one that decides whether open distribution works.
Penetration (exclusive) — the same idea inside a partner network, and reliably higher. A platform that has committed to your title merchandises it.
Plays per active venue per month — throughput at a venue that is genuinely running your game. Keep this identical on both sides unless you have a real reason to think placement changes usage.
How you’re paid — percentage of the consumer price, or a flat fee per play. Flat fee removes your exposure to what the venue charges. Percentage means you rise with their pricing.
Consumer price per play — what the guest pays.
Platform’s share from the venue — the portion of the ticket the content platform collects. Everything you earn is calculated from this slice.
Your share of that — your cut of the platform’s share — a percentage of a percentage. This is where exclusive deals get expensive: your effective per-play revenue is two cuts multiplied together, so a modest-looking change on either compounds hard. At the exclusive defaults, 25% of a 40% platform share leaves you 10% of the ticket.
The calculator opens on illustrative numbers, and they show something worth sitting with.
Open: 400 reachable venues, 30% adoption, 80 plays per venue per month, $12 consumer price, platform takes 50%, you get 50% of that — $3.00 per play, and $345,600 a year.
Exclusive: 650 venues in the network, 85% penetration, same 80 plays, same $12 price, platform takes 40%, you get 25% of that — $1.20 per play, and $636,480 a year.
Exclusive wins by 1.8×, at 40% of the per-play rate. Distribution beat economics, because 552 venues running your game at $1.20 outproduces 120 venues running it at $3.00.
Now the useful part: hold everything else and ask what open adoption would have to be to catch up. The answer is about 55%. So the real question is never “which deal has better terms.” It’s whether you can realistically get more than half of every reachable venue to switch your game on without a partner pushing it. Most studios cannot, and that — not the revenue split — is the honest case for exclusivity.
Run the numbers, then argue with them. The calculator is a revenue model, not a deal evaluation, and several things that decide real negotiations aren’t in it:
Yes. No signup, nothing to download. It runs in your browser, and nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.
Studios and developers of location-based VR and immersive games deciding how to distribute a title, and operators or platforms who want to see the deal from the content side.
Open (non-exclusive) means listing across multiple content platforms — wider reach, better per-play terms, lower adoption per venue. Exclusive means one platform or chain rolls you out across their network — guaranteed placement and much higher penetration, at a thinner slice.
Because two percentages multiply. The platform takes its share of the ticket, and you get a share of that share. At the default terms — a 40% platform share and a 25% cut of it — you keep 10% of the consumer price: $1.20 on a $12 play, versus $3.00 on the open side.
Not on its own. In the default scenario the open path pays 2.5× more per play and still loses, because too few venues run it. Rate per play only matters multiplied by the number of venues actually running your game.
Yes — that’s the consulting work. Get in touch.
The calculator tells you which path pays more on your assumptions. It can’t tell you whether your assumptions are right, or what to ask for at the table. That’s the go-to-market work — and it’s what I do with VR and location-based entertainment companies.