Ubisoft says that it will be the first to make what it's calling a "AAAA" game with the release of Beyond Good And Evil 2 and Skull & Bones. The developer will reveal more about its next-gen plans at the upcoming Ubisoft Forward presentation, where it likely has plenty of surprises in store.
The term "AAA" refers to big budget games that are considered to be on the same scale as blockbuster movies. Games that are labeled AAA usually involve large-scale teams, several years of production, multimillion dollar budgets, expensive marketing campaigns, and ties to well established developers or publishers. The term AAAA has been floating around in recent months online, but it hasn't been adopted by the game industry at large. Microsoft has also claimed that its new studio, The Initiative, was created specifically to develop AAAA titles for the Xbox Series X.
Ubisoft seems keen to be the first to release what would be considered a AAAA title. According to WCCFtech, Ubisoft is now adopting the term to describe its upcoming games Beyond Good and Evil 2 and Skull & Bones. Ubisoft developers working on those projects used the term AAAA in their LinkedIn profiles when describing the games, as spotted by Twitter user Timur222.
While Beyond Good And Evil 2 was confirmed as not releasing in 2020, Ubisoft is keeping all the information related to the title close to its chest. It’s been three years since the trailer dropped at E3 2017, with development rumored to have begun in 2016. Another trailer was shown at E3 2018 a year later, but since then, new sources of information have run relatively dry. The Beyond Good And Evil 2 beta that was promised to launch in late 2019 never happened and the game was also passed over at Ubisoft’s Forward in July this year. Another Ubisoft Forward is scheduled for later this month, so perhaps some kind of update will be shown this time. Skull & Bones doesn't appear to be faring any better, with rumors that the game was being rebooted earlier this year.
It’s strange for such a big name developer such as Ubisoft to be so confident about a title like Beyond Good And Evil 2, a semi-related sequel to a 2003 Xbox game that most of the current gaming generation has never even heard of. Adding to that, what a AAAA designation even means is still unclear, as nothing has yet to ascend beyond the scope of a AAA title. With the next generation of consoles releasing later this year, perhaps this new level of technology will usher in a new wave of games beyond the current standard of the industry as it currently stands, or perhaps it's just the latest self-aggrandizing buzzword conjured up to help games stand out in their incredibly competitive field.
Source: WCCFtech, Timur222/Twitter