| Zackasaurus-rex said: This is a very interesting point, actually. If stuff like Zelda is AA (and I would agree), then stuff like their 2D platforms are generally, what, A? These are terms we don't use a lot. xD |
I think that Nintendo spends more on their 2D games than most people are willing to accept. They have 2-3 year development cycles like any other game. I doubt the budget gap between 3D Mario and 2D Mario is very wide.
If you isolate Nintendo for the sake of comparison and arbitrarily decide to use the standard A, AA, AAA labels used for the industry as a whole then I suppose you might wind up with something like NES Remix being A, most 3DS games being AA, and most Wii U games being AAA. But those terms are meaningless when you have removed the context that defines them. In the larger picture, almost all Nintendo games likely fall into that AA bracket -- and the few that don't are legitimately A stuff like NES Remix or remakes. Hell, they put some decent effort into their remakes, so those might actually qualify as AA.
Nowadays AAA seems to mean 3 million+ sales are needed just to recoup developments costs. I don't believe that applies to any of Nintendo's games. Sometimes they are criticized for "playing it safe," but if they had been taking such enormous risks on Wii U software they'd be much, much worse off than they are now. Basically, it's a good thing they didn't assume that NSMBU would sell 25 million and give it a GTA-sized budget.
