TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY
How Hollow Metric Works
Hollow Metric helps indie developers turn launch assumptions into clearer planning numbers. It does not predict demand or guarantee sales. It shows how your own budget, price points, and revenue assumptions affect the break-even target for your game.
The core idea
Hollow Metric starts with a simple question: how many copies does this game need to sell before it has recovered its costs?
To answer that, the tool connects your planned spend, launch price, estimated net revenue per copy, and break-even target in one workflow. When one assumption changes, the target changes too.
What goes into a break-even estimate
A break-even estimate is only as useful as the assumptions behind it. Hollow Metric is designed to make those assumptions visible instead of hiding them in scattered notes or a messy spreadsheet.
- Planned development and launch costs
- Launch price
- Platform fees
- Tax or withholding assumptions
- Discounts, refunds, and other revenue adjustments where relevant
- Estimated net revenue per copy
- Copies needed to recover the planned spend
Why price changes the target
A higher launch price can reduce the number of copies needed to recover costs, but it can also raise player expectations. A lower launch price may feel safer, but it can require more sales volume to reach the same financial target.
Hollow Metric helps you compare those tradeoffs before launch so the pricing decision is not just based on instinct.
How competitor pricing should be used
Competitor price analysis is meant to provide context, not a perfect answer. Similar games can help you sanity-check your price range, but they cannot guarantee demand for your own game.
Hollow Metric uses competitor pricing as one input in the planning process. The final decision should still account for your scope, quality bar, audience, genre expectations, launch timing, and discount strategy.
What Hollow Metric does not do
Be direct about what the tool cannot promise.
- It does not guarantee sales
- It does not predict exact demand
- It does not replace market research
- It does not know your final product quality
- It does not remove the risk of launching a game
- It does not make pricing decisions for you
It gives you clearer numbers so you can make the decision with less guesswork.
Why this matters before release
Many indie developers discover the real financial target too late, after the scope, budget, or timeline has already grown. Hollow Metric is built to make that target visible earlier, while there is still time to adjust the plan.
Use it to pressure-test the launch before the launch pressure starts.
Test your own launch assumptions
Build a free break-even model using your own budget, price points, and revenue assumptions.