| pokoko said: In the real meaning of the word, main-line Zelda games are unquestionably AAA. It does not refer to budget but rather to sales expectations. The "AAA = big budget" is something the gaming community made up on its own because they didn't understand the usage inside the industry. Now, in public perception, it's come to mean "big budget", which is kind of a shame. When I managed and did the ordering for a video store, I would get pre-order catelogs which all used this ranking system. It's a retail tool to help understand what will yield a solid ROI. Something like Just Dance, for instance, is a strong AAA, and I often saw Nintendo DS titles with that classification. Even if we use the internet gaming forum definition, I'm quite sure it would still apply. It's not like Nintendo pays in peanuts. Zelda has been in development for a long time, and time directly equates to money. It's open-world-ish, with lots of art assets and obviously a lot of technical man-hours. It's going to be fairly expensive. On topic, assuming the OP is refering to budget, I think there is a good chance Nintendo is no longer green-lighting larger projects for the Wii U. Anything not already in full development will probably be suspended or possibly moved to the next console, assuming they're at a point where they can even begin software work. It would be the most prudent course to take. |
Development time is only one factor. The other is the size of the development team. Most of Nintendo's dev teams are around or fewer than 100 people -- relatively small these days, it seems.
Even if we use your definition of AAA as sales expectation, I don't see why Zelda would count. What are the sales expectations for this game? Surely not greater than Mario Kart 8 (that one would be AAA in this case). I would think 1-3 million is the AA range, with games like Fire Emblem and Pikmin falling there. Besides, sales expectations and budget are bound together -- the greater the publisher's expectations, the greater the budget is likely to be. Nintendo doesn't "expect" most of their games to sell more than a couple million, which is why they're able to keep their budgets in check.
I have to say, the OP's question doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of the definition of AAA you've provided. At this rate nobody in their right mind would expect any Wii U game released in 2016 or later to sell "AAA" numbers, no matter what it is. And while I'm sure Nintendo is still greenlighting new games for Wii U, they're probably mostly short-term projects. A standard development time starting now would mean a release in 2018. Even the Wii barely had any new releases 6 years after its launch.
