Ok we all seen people here hype up whatever game as being a AAA game and being a system seller or whatever with no justification for it.

The point here is what are the criteria you need for a game to be an AAA?  

Some ideas:

1) Must have a budget in the 10 or 20% of current generation games.  (Vague but lets assume that means around $10-15 mil)

2) Gamerankings/metacritic average rating of at least 85 or 90%.

3) Global sales of 1 mil or more (or region based).

4) Be part of a succesful & popular franchise.

5) Several of the above.

To give you some perspective:

Metroid Prime 3 is currently only 89% on gamerankings but is a well known franchise and has hit 1 mil sales.  

Assassin's Creed is only 80-83% on gamerankings but is a new IP and has sold around 4.5 mil now.

Okami was a top rated game and won GOTY but had miserable sales.

Lair is in the top game budgets but horrible ratings and bad sales.

Discuss 

FOR THE LAST TIME, OKAMI DID NOT HAVE BAD SALES!!!!!

A AAA game is whatever the consumer considers to be among their favorites, we have seen games panned by some only to be embraced whole heartedly by others, one man's trash is another's treasure

 The sales information beg to differ.  There's a reason why so many places like IGN placed it in the Best Game Nobody Played categories.  Even one of Capcom's VP has stated publicly on their forums that Capcom was disappointed in its sales and that one of the main reason's they're porting it to the Wii is to give it another chance to prove itself. 

 When the publisher states that its disappointed, there's no way to argue around its performance since they are the ones accountable for the game.

 Disagree, that applies to favorite games but saying its an AAA game is completely different.  Some people really like Super Monkey ball or whatever but you'll not find people arguing its an AAA game.  Same thing applies to movies, everyone will recognize Spiderman 3 being a big event movie regardless of whether they like it or not.

Being an AAA game does not necessarily mean everyone likes it or that its the best game ever. 

Perhaps the Wii can give Okamai a second chance

 I disagree, if a consumer loves Super Monkey ball, and plays it every day, then to them its AAA, they may not even know or care about reviews they just will know they love the game

From my understanding of how people typically use the term AAA, I would define it as a "High profile game that is critically acclaimed (averages over 90%) and is a multi-million seller (typically selling over 5 Million units)" ...

"AAA Game" is in the same league as "Hardcore Game" in that it's an loosely defined idea horribly perverted in hundreds of different ways to benefit people trying to win arguments on internet forums.

I read somewhere the term originally was an insider term developers apply to their highest budgeted titles. But I heard that on the internet, so that probably isn’t true either. =P 

 Acclaimed by who?

Remeber Wii sports got panned by gaming sites, but got GOTY from time