Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal

Re:Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal by sk0g on Monday January 31, 2022 @06:26PM (#30156301)

Not sure what definition you are using to exclude Pokemon, but Wikipedia's [0] definition certainly would classify it as AAA [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAA_(video_game_industry) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher#Major_pub...

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Re:Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal by onlyrealcuzzo on Monday January 31, 2022 @06:37PM (#30156444)

I think AAA is more about budget.

I thought the budget for AAA games was higher, and I thought the budget for Pokemon (handheld games) would be lower.

But turns out Pokemon Sword and Shield cost >$20M to make, and AAA is low 10s of millions. Definitely AAA by every measure.

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Re:Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal by Jensson on Monday January 31, 2022 @06:47PM (#30156544)

I don't think many would say that $20M would be AAA today, games are much bigger and more expensive today than 20 years ago. $20M budget means you would break even on less than a million sales, I doubt anyone would call that level of budget AAA.

Pokémon does however have an AAA level marketing budget even if it doesn't have AAA level development budget.

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