AAA Extinction? The Rise of AAA+

The advent of AAA games as a service (sometimes called AAA+) is changing the landscape of high production value video games, and it seems it has an effect on what you'd call a traditional AAA. Is this something to be worried about? Are games like The Last of Us, Final Fantasy XV, and Dishonored 2 a dying breed? Not necessarily, but they may will be fewer in number over the coming years as publishers focus their attention on games that lock players into a service.

The evolution of FIFA is perhaps a good indication of what AAA+ is all about. Not only are the production values kept high, but in addition to an ever growing number of modes and features, it also offers FIFA Ultimate Team and constant updates and weekly content. It's still an annual release, but players who are invested in FIFA likely buy fewer other games every year than they would have done five years ago. Games like The Division, Destiny, and to some degree Call of Duty, Overwatch and Battlefield are trying the same. Other games go at it from the opposite end, putting service before AAA to an extent, and you end up with titles in the vein of Hitman and Rainbow Six: Siege. While the impact isn't as great with those, on an individual player basis we could see some players spending far more time with these games than they would with their AAA predecessors.

As you can tell there are many ways in which AAA transitions into AAA+. Bungie is one interesting case study as they moved on from what was clearly a very traditional AAA development cycle with the Halo titles, to the more complex MMO-ish service that is Destiny. It has changed Bungie, a studio that has grown since its days under Microsoft's care. They house multiple teams, some working on the next expansion, others on keeping live updates going, and then, of course, there is the team that has moved on to work on the sequel. But sequels are something far more complicated in the AAA+ space. What Destiny is now, following more than two years of live updates, expansions and balance tweaks as well as evolution based on feedback, is something that Bungie will need to top from day one with the sequel, or they risk losing part of the community to other games.

Overwatch is different in that while it will work as a service, it's scope is far more narrow and the idea of updating the game with free content may not be as lucrative once the new game sales drop off. However, the flip side of that is that Blizzard games tend to sell very well over a long period of time and that is largely fuelled by their stellar support.

Another big game that took an unexpected service turn is, of course, Grand Theft Auto V, and it certainly seems like that is paying dividends for Rockstar and publisher Take-Two. Unfortunately for those who enjoy the single-player experience more than GTA Online, this most likely means an extended wait for the next chapter in the series, and one has to wonder whether the success of GTA Online meant that plans for single-player expansions were scrapped.

World of Warcraft had a similar effect many years ago, but the advent of AAA+, which is separate from MMORPGs, has a more far reaching effect. The amount of time players spend playing games is finite, and if your needs are fulfilled by three games you're not going to pick up a fourth and a fifth game. Well, some of us do, but we end up having embarrassing backlogs on Steam.

Of course, traditional AAA titles try to adapt to this new landscape. Bioware added co-operative modes to Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition, but that's not really the way to engage players over a long period of time. It felt tacked on, a decision made at the executive level. The question is; do you revert back to a more traditional approach or do you invest even more to transform your AAA franchise to something AAA+?

The answer is that if it can be done, it most likely will be done. It makes financial sense; if you have a successful service up and running and you can release paid content, while also having the best (and cheapest) possible marketing, namely word of mouth from a satisfied and well populated player base, there is much profit to be had.

This means that while overall investment into AAA development likely stays the same, perhaps even increasing slightly over time, that money will go into fewer projects. There will be less risk taken. We've seen it with the death of AA (or the middle). And if many franchises were retired and left behind during the last generation of consoles, you better believe that even more will be abandoned during this generation. A new Dead Space from EA? A new Prototype from Activision? A new Thief from Square-Enix? We don't see them happening, at least not anytime soon.

But while publishers continue to hunt for the next AAA+ to break revenue records, there are publishers who seem to feel that the traditional AAA space is a niche that works for them. It's difficult to imagine Bethesda changing their ways. And while many Japanese publishers have seem some of their productions slip back into the AA space, it's hard to see them being overly adventurous.

And then there's the first-parties, who realise that maximising revenue on one big AAA+ may not be the way to sell their consoles. Sony in particular seem to see value in pure single-player AAA experiences. But if we look further ahead it is likely that the indie scene will begin to approach the AAA space in terms of scope and production values. We can already see mid-sized independents self-publish what would have been called AA productions (slightly lower production values than AAA, and with a more narrow scope) a decade ago. It likely won't stop there. And if VR really takes off, that's also going to roll things back slightly. VR development is expensive, and it's hard to imagine you can invest enough into a VR project to make it a true AAA+ experience anytime soon.

Recently we've seen well received sequels like Dishonored 2 and Watch Dogs 2 fail to live up to the commercial performances of their predecessors. There are likely a multitude of reasons for this, the original Watch Dogs had a ton of hype and left many disappointed which meant Watch Dogs 2 always had an uphill struggle. The case of Dishonored 2 is different, the original sold well, but not extremely well. It is quite possible that the audience has moved away from pre-ordering this sort of classic AAA single-player experience and wait confidently for a price cut or perhaps a period in which they don't have anything else to play. This would be a potentially cataclysmic change for an industry that is traditionally banking of huge day one sales. If consumer behaviour changes that could spur on more dramatic changes on the development side, even if there is a built in delay as a result of lengthy development cycles.

So in conclusion; there is hope for the traditional AAA title, games with high production values, but little in terms of ongoing online support and services. But don't expect there to be a growing number of them in the next couple of years as development resources are diverted towards AAA+, with revenue for the traditional AAA titles that do make it to market also potentially set to suffer.