Triple-A or AAA is normally a pretty non-descript way of saying a game costs a lot of money to make. AAA games are the summer blockbusters of the industry, but one veteran took the AAA arms race to the next level by declaring that GTA 6 is a "AAAAA" release.
Nigel Lowrie, who co-founded boutique publisher Devolver Digital, recently came out to say that basically no other video game series can touch Grand Theft Auto in terms of "cultural impact" or "scope."
Speaking to IGN, Lowrie explained, "There are AAA games and then there's AAAA games, and I'd argue that Grand Theft Auto is potentially the AAAAA game; it's just bigger than anything else both in the scope and scale of the game and the kind of cultural impact that it has and the attention it demands."
Ubisoft previously got a lot of flak for calling its failed pirate-fuelled live service Skull and Bones a AAAA game, the same language Microsoft used when it was first recruiting folks for The Initiative, the now-defunct studio behind Perfect Dark's reboot, also cancelled.
If a AAA tag signifies a big-budget and big public awareness, AAAAA just means an ever bigger budget and a place in the cultural consciousness, though it's generally a kinda silly way to talk about games because it's mostly based on vibes.
Devolver Digital itself joked that it would launch a game on the same day as GTA 6's release date, next May, which could potentially be a good counter-programming move, but it's not a strategy the publisher used when recently delaying Baby Steps out of Hollow Knight Silksong's orbit.
"You can't AB test reality," Lowrie said. "Maybe Baby Steps would've just been fine September 8, it could have been. But am I willing to risk this team's livelihood and the future of the game they've worked on for five years to see if they both work out? I'm not. And I also want to listen to what they want, and what they want is to have their own spotlight and I couldn't agree more."
So, who knows, maybe that mysterious Devolver Digital game won't release alongside GTA 6, after all.
"The biggest competitor to Grand Theft Auto 6 will be Grand Theft Auto 5," says industry analyst, because AAA is struggling against the live-service behemoths it created years ago
