'Triple-A' Titles. Good or bad for the industry?

[Flake]

When I was a kid, I don't remember hearing the phrase 'triple A' used by fanboys or execs when talking about video games. If a game was going to be a big deal, it just got a little bit better marketing and maybe a poster in Nintendo power or the cover of EGM.

But nowadays, it's all about the 'Triple A' title. 'oh gosh, we know our last game was mud but just wait for the triple A title we're going to reveal at E3!' And so a fairly generic game with great graphics but terrible gameplay, broken code, and no replay value comes out. Hype explodes in the half a year before it comes out, fanboys draw their battle lines. Gamestop does a midnight release...2 Months later you can pick it up online for a fraction of the price and it's never spoken of again.

And I feel like because of this culture, fewer and fewer games with real staying power are being made. There have been so few games that will stick with us released in the last several years, despite the fact that the gaming industry has never invested so much money and effort into their products.

What do you guys think? Triple-A culture is good or bad for our hobby?

[enderfall]

I do think the moniker "AAA" title is overused. But seriously, what other choice do they (publishers and developers) really have. It's not like they are going to say, "Hey, check out our "AA" title!" or even "A" title.

[MrPopo]

Really what's happening is that the visuals have reached a fairly realistic level. Combine that with more and more story elements arriving in games of all genres (Gears has more story in it than Mario, even though both are very action games) and you have this emphasis on a playable movie. This comes at a price, though. The budgets for the art assests are pretty huge in order to achieve that level of fidelity. This has also caused 2D games to be considered "cheap". The AAA rating tends to mean a high budget game that's supposed to blow everything out of the water. Then you might have a game like Muramasa or Mega Man 9 which is supposedly cheaper. That doesn't mean it's less fun, but those games just won't capture a certain segment of the market that the "AAA" titles will.

[Lord_Santa]

in all honesty, I've never heard of an AAA title

I've heard the expression thrown around on the interwebs, but never off-line

might just be me, but then again, I rarely (if ever) read reviews from gamespot/IGN/and it's ilk

I listen to my friends (yes, I have one or two) and their opinion, then I try it out and rate it myself

[Gnashvar]

Back then we would buy a lot of crap though. All because games weren't labeled as one of the "best" and so on. The internet and things like E3 have really changed the way look at games. Now you can actually avoid buying crappy games.

[Hatta]

AAA might be a new term, but the idea has always been there. SMB3 was a AAA title if there ever was one. They even made a movie hyping its release.

[Gamerforlife]

Back then we would buy a lot of crap though. All because games weren't labeled as one of the "best" and so on. The internet and things like E3 have really changed the way look at games. Now you can actually avoid buying crappy games.

LOL

Really, because I often find that the highest rated titles ARE the crappy games.

Resident Evil 5, crap. That Prince of Persia game with Elika in it, crap. Uncharted 2, well it was good until I hit this jungle level, where it turns to crap.

[Erik_Twice]

^It depends. Obviously if you read IGN you are going to eat a lot of crap.

However it's better than following Nintedo Power to know if a Nintendo game is good.

[Flake]

^It depends. Obviously if you read IGN you are going to eat a lot of crap.

However it's better than following Nintedo Power to know if a Nintendo game is good.

Actually, modern day Nintendo power is surprisingly impartial. It helps that they are now a magazine independent of the actual Nintendo company, I suppose. But then again, there was the Nintendo Power of Yesteryear...