Beyond Good and Evil 2 and Forza Motorsport 5 games to be 'AAAA' class projects

It seems some major game publishers no longer consider the globally accepted 'AAA' quality designation (referring to high-budget computer games) sufficient for their upcoming projects.

For instance, Microsoft recently announced that its new studio, The Initiative, was specifically formed to develop 'AAAA' class games. Moreover, according to the Redmond giant, the next highly anticipated installment of the racing simulator, Forza Motorsport 5, will also adhere to this new quality standard.

And as of yesterday, Ubisoft has joined Microsoft: the French company is gradually starting to use this term internally across many of its studios. Evidence comes from the LinkedIn profiles of a couple of Ubisoft developers, which specifically reference 'AAAA' projects.

One of these profiles belongs to Cyril Masclef, technical art director for Beyond Good and Evil 2. The developer openly describes his project as a 'long-in-development, new-gen, open-world 'AAAA' class game.'

This information was shared publicly by Timur222:

A new quality standard is, of course, excellent. But the main question right now is whether this new 'AAAA' designation will actually mean anything. Will projects carrying this 'label' become more perfect, complex, and ambitious than existing 'triple-A' games? Or is 'AAAA' simply a new marketing trick designed to justify rising game prices?

While we don't want to overstate the negativity or spread panic prematurely, the latter scenario is the most likely. Nevertheless, it's certainly worth waiting for the release of at least one of these infamous 'AAAA' class games before drawing any conclusions.

Given that the nearest projects adhering to this new standard are Forza Motorsport 5 and Beyond Good and Evil 2, we shouldn't have to wait too long.

Source: WccfTech