Do the console makers games count as triple A?

[pokoko]

couchmonkey said:

pokoko said:

I used to be the buyer for a video and game rental store.  Before people corrupted the meaning of the phrase, it had to do with investment potential.  Yes, exactly like how "AAA" is used in financial matters.

I used to get catalogs from major wholesale video and game distributors (oddly, there is a porn distributor that still sends me catalogs).  Many of the games were rated with AAA, AA, etc.  It was a way for retailers who didn't know much about gaming to select key releases with a high ROI.  

It had absolutely nothing to do with how much a game cost to make but instead with how much a game was projected to earn.  

It's kind of funny now to see people calling big budget flops AAA.  I remember specifically some 3DS titles being rated AAA.  I remember Pokemon being AAA and, I'm pretty sure, Kirby.  It wasn't rare to see games like Cooking Mama rate an AAA, as well.  

So, yeah, this is really a case where people who didn't know what a term really meant creating their own definition and then everyone else repeating it as gospel until it effectively replaced the original definition.  

wow, very intersting!  Do you mind if I ask when you were doing this? Sounds like about 5-10 years ago?

 

@GoOnkid: I agree with your comment that AAA is used by marketing to impky  a game is "best" quality, I also feel like it would originally be most attributed to big westen publishers like EA! and Activision, thoug it has spread to pretty general usage.

At least 10 years ago, probably a bit more.