Game Development Community

Definition of a AAA Engine?

by Douglas Marsh · in General Discussion · 04/27/2003 (3:16 pm) · 3 replies

From a development standpoint, what are the feature that would classify an engine as AAA.

#1
04/27/2003 (5:43 pm)
From what I can tell, the only real requirement is "the engine was used in a released AAA title."

As for the definition of THAT, I don't know if there are any specific qualifications for being named AAA as opposed to AA, etc. Anyone else know of any?
#2
04/27/2003 (6:08 pm)
Perhaps it has to do with the game selling a certain number of units.
#3
04/27/2003 (8:01 pm)
From the publisher's perspective, the "AAA" label is linked to sales. There are no defined benchmarks that I know of, but in general AAA titles are those you see at the top of the sales charts.

So an "AAA engine" I guess would be an engine you can use to make a game that sells a heck of a lot of copies. If your selling point is going to be graphics, it would have to be a very graphically impressive engine.