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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - What Nintendo titles are AAA?

fedfed on 04 July 2017

Anything With Mario name in it (2d - 3d kart, party etc.)
Smash
Xeno
Zelda (or anything with Link, Hyrule name in it)
Animal Crossing
Pikmin
Yoshi
Kirby
Kid Icarus
Splatoon
Arms
Donkey Kong
Pokémon
Metroid
Fire Emblem




Switch!!!

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S.T.A.G.E. on 04 July 2017
Mar1217 said:
From my perspective, since there's no clear understanding of what is a AAA title.

- The Legend of Zelda (2D and 3D games)
- Super Mario
- Mario Kart
- Super Smash Bros
- Animal Crossing
- Metroid (3D games)
- Kirby (Call me crazy but it's still huge in Japan and does have a good success worldwide to justify it's place)
- Splatoon
- Xenoblade (It doesn't have the sales of AAA games but it certainly is ambitious, as much as any AAA )
- Fire Emblem (The upcoming game on Switch will probably confirm my claim)

AAA is a title with a large production and marketing budget. I.e.: legend of Zelda: breath of the wild and Mario odyssey.



Rogerioandrade on 04 July 2017

I think this concept of "AAA games" is sort of dumb, but anyway..... they´d be:

The Legend of Zelda,
Super Mario (main series),
Fire Emblem,
Pokemon (main series),
Super Smash Bros,
Mario Kart,
Splatoon,
Xenoblade Chronicles
Metroid / Metroid Prime
Animal Crossing (main series)
Kirby



Volterra_90 on 04 July 2017

High-budget games... I think that Zelda, Splatoon 2, MK8 and Super Mario Odyssey fit that definition this year. Not sure about Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I'm not sure how much is the development cost of that game.



Mbolibombo on 04 July 2017
CGcarmineCG said:

The legend of Zelda and Mario (at least the majorities of the serie's entry such as 3D Mario and Mario Kart, not the 8 deluxe obv) are the AAA projects, the others didn't feel like games with huge ivestments. Maybe Pokémon but isn't a Nintendo franchise, so i think only the first 2.

It is though. Nintendo own all the trademarks for the franchise, every single name and character and even the logo. It is thirdparty developed though but that doesnt really mean much in terms of ownership of the franchise. Maybe you are thinking about the pokemon company? That doesnt have anything to do with the ownership, they just manage the brand. And that's owned threeways - Nintendo, Gamefreak and Creatures.



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GuyDuke on 04 July 2017
RolStoppable said:
GoOnKid said:

The term 'AAA' needs to be defined first. Everyone uses it differently. But forget about it, we already tried that, it won't work. We will never find a consensus. AAA is just a meaningless word that's supposed to express high value. But as value is subjective, everybody will have a different opinion. For example, some would rate God of War as AAA, while I rather see a derivative of earlier games that brought nothing new to the table. On the other hand I would rate Mario as AAA, while others would feel like it's the same old same old. So, if we could have a common understanding of the term, we may find an answer to your question. But we can't.

AAA refers to high development and marketing budget. The quality of the games doesn't matter. Since the quality is irrelevant, the importance of AAA is artificial.

On topic: This year for Switch they are Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey.

I'm not quite sure Splatoon 2 fits that critera though. Splatoon's development isn't expansive, as it took less than half what Mario Odyssey or BotW needed for completion and release. Nintendo is indeed marketing it intensively, as Splatoon possess immense selling power, so critera 2 is ok. I would categorize it as AA, in the end.

@OP: That is a very good question to debate. I'd say Zelda, 3D Mario, Smash Bros and Xenoblade are the top tier Nintendo intellectual properties.



Jumpin on 04 July 2017
GoOnKid said:

The term 'AAA' needs to be defined first. Everyone uses it differently.

It's because a lot of people weren't around in the 90s, lots of kids on this site, where AAA was most commonly used as an acronym: A lot of time, A lot of resources, and A lot of money. But it's how relative these terms are; like does "A lot of people" = 400+, or is it only 200+.

So basically 3D Mario games and Zelda games come closest. Breath of the Wild had 300 people on staff, Nintendo's largest team, and it took 4+ years. But that's still small compared to the 500-1500 that work on Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, GTA, and Witcher 3 (CoD is the game that had 500 people, GTA and AC had over 1000 devs, and Witcher 3 had 1500).

Cost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop

You get games which cost over 100 million to develop, and another 150 to market. I am assuming this comes before production and shipment expenses.



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

Jumpin on 04 July 2017
Mar1217 said:
S.T.A.G.E. said:

AAA is a title with a large production and marketing budget. I.e.: legend of Zelda: breath of the wild and Mario odyssey.

There's that,but there's still more to it. Popularity, sales, ambition(scope) are other important factors to take into consideration.

AAA stands for: A lot of time, A lot of resources, and A lot of money.

So, essentially what STAGE said. Being popular and high selling is usually the result of a title being AAA, but it is not what makes it a AAA. Many AAA titles are not particularly ambitious, and are often clones of other big budget games with no ambition to go outside the formula.



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

DaAndy on 04 July 2017

instead of asking for "AAA titles" I would rather ask for "system sellers".

Which Nintendo games are real system sellers?
Tier1 (big) system sellers:
- 3D Zelda
- 3D Mario
- Mario Kart
- Splatoon
- Smash Bros
- Pokemon

Tier2 (average) system sellers:
- Animal crossing (not sure, maybe something like Tier 1.5)
- 2D Mario
- Metroid (at least it feels like Metroid Prime 4 can move some consoles)
- Kirby (maybe^^)


Maybe I had forgot one or two, but it feels like all other games like Xenoblade, Yoshi, Donkey Kong and so on are not really moving consoles, but they are just bought by the people which already have got the accordingly console.



Wyrdness on 04 July 2017

I feel like AAA much like the whole gen definition is now very loose as things have evolved since the term was first coined, I agree with Mar1217 in that AAA as far as things go have a bit more to them than just budget and resources.

AAA was just a term for big titles that push numbers and I think people are mistaking developers using a AAA style approach in deciding whether a game is AAA when that's not really the case, to put it simply a AAA game is a big game so any title that pushes the platform heavily is AAA it's not really about budget because straight up I'd say Minecraft is AAA with its insane popularity and I doubt that had a massive budget when it was created.