No.

Actually, it does. When you invest big into a title, you'd want to invest big into advertising to sell your original investment.

When it's cheap to make your game and you're unsure if it would sell. You'd probably prefer to save on the the advertising.

Little King's Story had the prospects to be AAA, only it was not marketed at all

Have you seen how they make JD and JD2?

They actually hired real professional dancers and then turn them into silhouettes.

They advertised the hell out of it only after it caught on and was selling in high numbers.

No I guess not, but tbh with so many requirements for something to be AAA I can't really think of any HD AAA games that have bombed either.  Maybe Rock Band 3, but that was a bomb for all consoles.

Best answer in this thread.

Within the industry, AAA generally refers to budget.  Along those lines, the only Wii exclusives that really qualify are probably Monster Hunter Tri, Just Dance 2 and Epic Mickey, all of which did exceptionally well.  I'm hesitant to really apply the AAA label to any multiplatform titles since the Wii versions invariably get shoved off the side for development and promotion (usually alongside the handheld versions), though there are a few exceptions there too (like Guitar Hero III).

In some ways that's a key point, I think - AAA values don't guarantee success, but they tend to result in them with great regularity.  For me, far too few third parties went AAA on their Wii games - perhaps they were hoping that the large userbase would garner success regardless (as may have happened with the original Just Dance), especially as fewer copies (relative to on the HD machines) would have to be sold to cover costs.  Conversely, the higher relative costs of developing for HD consoles means that some AAA HD games probably did amount to a loss despite perhaps selling seemingly respectable numbers (Bayonetta might be such an example, but it's hard to really pinpoint such games).

It might be that there is a different perception of AAA on HD consoles to the Wii.  For example, Enslaved didn't do too well.  It's development and advertising costs were, I'm sure, far higher than the vast majority of pap that comes out on Wii, and maybe even higher than games touted as AAA on Wii (I bet Red Steel 2 cost nowhere near as much as Enslaved, though I personally wouldn't consider it AAA precisely because I never saw any TV adverts for it in the UK, though I saw many for Enslaved).  Wii owners would, I'm sure, have lapped up many of the games considered decent but not AAA on the HD machines, given the long spells without anything really good to buy.

Sorry, I started rambling a bit there.

Just Dance 2 certainly got very well advertised, no doubt because the original became something of a breakout success (the scale of which I highly doubt Ubisoft were expecting - they certainly didn't advertise Just Dance 1 in the beginning in the way they did the sequel).  But I don't think you are right to suggest that its development was as costly or as craftsmanly as the other games you mentioned - the fact that they were able to churn it out within a year of the original (with the sequel probably only commissioned once it became clear the original was going to be a big success, which would have taken a while given the slow early sales) is evidence of that.

Australia is a small market.  Here in the UK - a much bigger market - I saw no TV ads for Red Steel 2 (and I watch enough TV to catch ads for genuine AAA titles - over the years I've seen plenty of ads for CoD, GTA, AC etc.).  Ubisoft cut there expected sales of the game before release to 0.5m.  If that was all they were expecting, they wouldn't have spent a AAA budget on marketing.  Red Steel 2, while being a relatively well made game and pretty well received, was not marketed as a AAA title.

I'd have to disagree.  I thought they 'sucked' too (though as a Brit I don't tend to use that term in that context).