It seems that Ubisoft believes that the market can only support a few AAA games. Do you agree?

The popularity of emerging business models and free-to-play has significantly reduced the scope for full-price triple-A success in the modern games market.

That’s the opinion of Ubisoft’s Toronto Studio boss Jade Raymond, who believes that while the sector has reduced in size there is still scope for success in more traditional markets.

“I think there's still room for really great triple-A games that can, despite the budget, retain the classic model of expecting people to pay in one big chunk. There's still room for that,” she told The Guardian.

“But the big publishers have to be honest with themselves – there's only room for let's say ten successful titles a year on those sorts of budgets. So you have to go all-in on those; you have to be sure you'll have a hit, and when you make it you have to invest everything to make sure it's amazing.”

Part of this, of course, is due to the rise of free-to-play gaming and the resultant changes of consumer expectations.

“The audience for games is becoming broader and even core gamers who are used to buying games in boxes, are spending more of their time on mobile,” Raymond added. “So whether it's long term gamers or the new generation who started out by playing free games on the web or mobile, we have a whole bunch of people who've been trained to think differently about the way they spend money on games.

“There's an expectation to be able to try for free, and only spend money if they want to. We have to figure out how to make that type of thing work with console games as well.”

Source

edit: oops wrong tread

The problem is, nobody knows what the hell a AAA game is. What we need to do is make a definition, find what games have qualified in the past, see how well they did, reach a conclusion, and see if that conclusion necessarily contradicts with this statement.

Totally depends on the definition of AAA games.

I don't like companies searching for other ways to take money from me. With the classic system at least I knew how much I was paying for a game. Now with all the DLCs, subscriptions, microtransaction you never really know. I hate it, that's why I never pay for such games.

It sounds like he means per company. Which yeah... I don't think a company should be making more then 10 super expensive games per year....

I'm using this post to write out qualifications for a AAA game. Shoot me advice!

Criteria so far:
*Budget that requires 1+ million copies to be sold to return on investment?
*Budget of $10 million+?
*Developed by a team of 50+ people?

I should say team size doesn't matter, except in its ability to impact budget. Total budget, including marketing budget, should be the sole deciding factor. Whether the game succeeds in meeting its own high standards should also be irrelevant

Pretty much every game qualifies for that. $100 million is the limit I'd use (you have to have room for B/Indie, A, AA bugdets).

And ignore the other points. Budget is the only thing that counts here.

marketing is more important. Aliens Colonial Marines is a AAA game, even it was a totally crap, but still a AAA game.