Wow, you guys can argue about AAA for no apparent reason. Jeez. Nobody has the definition of the AAA, because there is none! Simple as that. Is just a term, made by the publishers, to advertise their games.
Also Sony didn't released a single 1st party game besides the usual MLB: the Show by SCE San Diego.
In 2012 they pushed the PSN:
Datura by Plastic Studios (2nd game after Linger in Shadows)
Yourney by Thatgamecompany (3rd game of a 3 game exclusive deal with Sony.)
Papo & Yo by Minority (1st game)
Unfinished Swan by Giant Sparrow (1st game of a 3 game exclusive deal with Sony.)
They had of course exclusive retail content, but none of them were 1st party:
Playstation All-Stars Battle Royal by Superbot
1st game of a new studio
Unproven franchise, which was made to bank on the success of a Nintendo IP.
Metacritic: 74 (PS3); 75 (Vita)
Sales: So far about 640k, could end up in 1m.
LittleBigPlanet Karting by United Front Games
3rd game of the studio (Modnation Racers and Sleeping Dogs)
A karting franchise, this is hardly a copy of Nintendo, more like a logical step to fuse the LBP and Modnation together in one franchise. I feel like it was a quick cash-in for the developer besides Sleeping Dogs, so they didn't put a lot of effort in it. (Sleeping Dogs is one of my favorite game of last year, by the way.)
Metacritic: 73 (Modnation was 82)
Sales: So far about 460k, selling closely the numbers Modnation had, and that reached 1 million eventually.
Sorcery by The Workshop
1st game of a new studio
A franchise made as a killer app for Move. I think it should've been out on as late as 2010 Christmas, after the Move launched. That's waht killed the hype for it.
Metacritic: 70
Sales: So far about 180k, selling slowly, so maybe reach 250k.
Starhawk by Lightbox Interactive
1st game of a new studio
Spiritual successor of the Warhawk game, which was a moderate success, when PS3 almost had no multiplayer game.
Metacritic: 77 (Warhawk 84)
Sales: So far about 215k, selling slowly, maybe reach 400k, abismal considering Warhawk sold about 700k in this timeframe, and ended as a million seller lifetime.
Twisted Metal by Eat, Sleep, Play
1st retail game of David Jaffe's studio (Calling All Cars! was a download-only release, and they ported Twisted Metal: Head-On from PSP to PS2)
Reboot of one of the PSOne's biggest franchise, with the original creator. First mainline game since Twisted Metal: Black on the PS2 in 2001.
Metacritic: 76 (Twisted Metal: Black 91)
Sales: So far about 610k, selling okay, could reach 1m lifetime.
So what I think Sony tried a lot of new developers out with unproven or old franchises, and most of them simply failed to get thes sales. Twisted Metal and LBP Karting will be okay, and may have a Vita sequel or port.
These 2nd party studios altough will not be okay:
Superbot Entertainment's contract was terminated for DLC, and handed to Santa Monica. Superbot downsized itself, and working on a new (probably smaller and not exclusive) IP
United Front Games's Sleeping Dogs sold 1,5 million, probably making a multiplatform sequel to that.
The Workshop is only worked on Borderlands 2 DLC since then.
LightBox Interactive's contract also ended, they're moving to iOS development.
Eat, Sleep, Play is left by David Jaffe, and the're moving to iOS development.
So from that it is certain that they failed to live up to the expectations. So I let you decide, which of those were an AAA game.
