What are AAA or triple-A video games?

From a certain point in the history of videogames, different words or concepts have been formed that, nowadays, are quite common to hear in different forums or web pages specialized in the subject, one of them is the triple A videogames or also called AAA videogames.

This is an unofficial term which originated in the late 1990s, indicating that a video game is designed by a highly reputable company which used a large amount of money to develop it. Usually the total amount is always expressed in millions of dollars.

One of the first video games that was considered an AAA was Final Fantasy VII, developed by the company Squaresoft (now SquareEnix) released in January 1997. A sum of 45 million dollars was used for the development of this game, making it the first title to use such a high sum of money for its production.

This may or may not be beneficial to the development company, in FFVII's case it was perfect, as it became one of the most famous RPGs of its time. In contrast, other AAA games like Shenmue used a $77 million budget, but in this case it represented a huge loss for Sega due to the low sales of the game.

Although these figures seem alarming, they are not close to other AAA stocks that have invested twice as much. Currently (2020) the video game that has invested the most money in its development is Grand Theft Auto V with a sum of 265 million dollars. Money that has been recovered thanks to the 115 million units sold.

Apart from the term AAA you can also find other interesting ones, among them are AAA+ which cover a large sum of money for development and their method of income is through micro-payments or in-game advertising. One of the companies using this concept is CD Projekt, creators of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Triple I or III are those games of Indie origin that, despite having a small development studio, were financed with a large amount of money for the creation of some video game, usually these funds are originated through campaigns such as Kickstarter or Early Access.

It's impressive how video games have become a multi-million dollar industry, although time has shown that it doesn't take that much money to create masterpieces, however, this factor helps a lot when it comes to having a team and managing tasks so that the video game is launched in the shortest time possible.

Did you know they were triple-A video games? Tell me what you think about it in the comments section.

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