AAA (video game industry)

An AAA game (usually pronounced "triple A game") is an informal classification used for video games with the highest development budgets and levels of promotion. AAA game development is associated with high economic risk, with high levels of sales required to obtain profitability.

In the mid 2010s the term AAA+ began to be used, describing AAA type games that generated additional revenue over time in a similar fashion to MMOs by using software as a service (SaaS) methods, such as season passes or expansion packs.

The term is analogous to the film industry term "blockbuster".

The term "AAA" began to be used in the late 1990s, with some development companies started using the expression at gaming conventions in the US.

By the seventh generation of video game consoles (late 2000s) AAA game development on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 game consoles typically cost low tens of millions of dollars ($15 to 20m) for a new game, with some sequels having even higher total budgets - for example Halo 3 is estimated to have had a development cost of $30m, and a marketing budget of $40m. According to a whitepaper published for EA games (Dice Europe) the seventh generation saw a contraction in the number of video developing houses creating AAA level titles, reducing from an estimated 125 to around 25, but with a roughly corresponding fourfold increase in staffing required for game development.

During seventh generation AAA (or "blockbuster") games had marketing at a similar level to high profile films, with television, billboard and newspaper advertising; a corresponding increasing reliance of sequels, reboots and similarly franchised IPS was also seen, in order to minimize risk. Costs at the end of the generation had risen as high as the hundreds of millions of dollars - the estimated cost of Grand Theft Auto V was ~$265m. The same conditions also drove the growth of the indie game scene at the other end of the development spectrum, where lower costs enabled innovation and risk taking.

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