RolStoppable said:
Monolith is 80 % owned by Nintendo nowadays, so it's not exactly third party anymore. I think they still make something for Namco though. But even if Monolith were third party, Xenoblade still wouldn't count, because Nintendo took care of the funding and publishing. Ports don't count, because they don't cost a lot. The game was already finished for another platform and is now released with a few minor tweaks. Work that can be done by a fraction of the original team in a fraction of the time. As for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, it certainly had a decent development budget (not necessarily a big one), but I don't think that it really got pushed hard by Konami. Internet hype doesn't equal actual marketing and it doesn't really make sense to invest a lot of money into advertising a horror game nowadays. You can classify video games in four groups: AAA, A, B and shovelware. AAA has already been explained and shovelware should be obvious. B titles are low budget productions with minimal marketing, usually targeted at a specific niche market. A titles fall inbetween AAA and B titles, so semi-big development budgets and reasonable marketing. I would put Shattered Memories in the A category. In terms of sales expectations for home console games:
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I don't know how well Shattered Memories got marketed TBH because I never watch TV nor do I read print gaming magazines, so I guess you're right.
As for the definition of AAA, unless the developers themselves tell us they consider it an AAA title, it can be pretty hard to define.
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