Rockstar, Naughty Dog, and Nintendo are "pushing the envelope of innovation with a AAA budget," says Split Fiction director: "You can do a big AAA title but also take innovative risks"

Split Fiction and It Takes Two director Josef Fares is worried about the future of AAA games in the face of what he sees as a AA uprising, but he knows of a few extremely high-profile studios striking the right balance of big-budget production and boundary-pushing innovation.

Talking to The Game Business, Fares expressed concern that the massive success of AA games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which was a sweep at the 2025 Game Awards, could spell trouble for the AAA industry. "I would not be able to live without a AAA title," he said. "I really want to play the blockbuster games."

In the midst of a years-long industry downsizing impacting major players like EA, Ubisoft, Take-Two, Xbox, PlayStation, and more, there's definitely something happening, but it's unclear how much AA development has to do with it. There's an argument to be made that developers working with tighter budgets are able to take more creative risks because they don't have to answer to investor-backed publishers - and because there's simply less on the line should their projects flop - but Fares praised a few AAA mainstays for continuing to pump out fresh new ideas on massive budgets.

"I would argue that, actually, Naughty Dog is pushing the envelope of innovation with a AAA budget," he said. "I would argue Rockstar is doing it. Nintendo is, most of the time, doing it. So you can do a big AAA title but also take innovative risks.

"But once you go over a $100 million dollar budget, you're going to be like, 'okay, shit. There's a lot of money on the table'. People are more scared. It's understandable. But it's proven that you can do it."

With Naughty Dog's Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet and Rockstar's GTA 6 still on the horizon, it's an open question whether those specific studios really are still committed to taking risks despite giga publisher backing, but Nintendo, at the very least, definitely seems to march to the beat of its very distinct drum for the most part.

As far as Fares's Hazelight Studios is concerned, the company's future is decidedly in local multiplayer. "As long as the couch is there, there's going to be a need for couch co-op," COO Oskar Wolontis recently told me.

These are the best co-op games you can play right now.