Devolver Digital Co-Founder Calls GTA 6 a AAAAA Game

With low-budget, small-team games becoming increasingly popular and so-called AAA releases losing relevance each year, it's getting increasingly harder – especially for the new generation of gamers – to make sense of what those AAs, AAAs, and AAAAs even mean, let alone how to distinguish one from another.

Where AAA once embodied quality, with a studio's name alone serving as marketing material, a string of weaker releases from big-league publishers in 2024 has shifted the perception, and for many, the number of As is now simply synonymous with the amount of Benjamins a studio has spent on production: AAA for high-budget, AA for mid-tier, and indie for shoestring budgets.

In an apparent attempt to make those As once again represent greatness, Devolver Digital Co-Founder Nigel Lowrie has stretched the label even further, bestowing the title of a AAAAA (pronounced quintuple-A, probably) to Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6.

In an interview with IGN, Lowrie explained that he coined the AAAAA label for a simple reason – GTA 6 is simply shaping up to be far larger than anything else ever developed, both in terms of scope and scale, as well as the cultural impact it carries and the attention it commands. Sharing that view is Adam Lieb, CEO of marketing platform Gamesight, who pointed out that the new GTA has come up in nearly every conversation about launch windows he has heard in recent years.

On one hand, one would struggle to disagree with Lowrie's assessment. Reports indicate that major publishers are indeed preparing to shift their releases away from May 2026 to avoid being eclipsed by Rockstar's juggernaut, and combined with the game's rumored production budget – development plus marketing – being in the $2 billion ballpark, there's little denying that GTA 6 is set to be an experience unlike anything we've seen before, regardless of the game's actual quality.

On the other hand, history shows that when publishers have applied the AAAA label, the few games described that way – three in total – didn't really live up to it.

The titles in question are Beyond Good and Evil 2, which in 2022 surpassed Duke Nukem Forever's record for the longest development period of a major video game and, due to the unfortunate passing of Creative Director Emile Morel in 2023, likely won't release for years to come; the Perfect Dark reboot, which got canceled twice – first due to mass layoffs at Xbox and again earlier this week after the team couldn't secure a new publishing deal; and last but not least, Skull and Bones, which did launch but failed to capture the community's attention and quickly faded into obscurity.

With examples like these, it does seem like giving any game more than three As is somewhat of an ill omen. Hopefully, Grand Theft Auto 6 will be strong enough to break this curse – truly earning the AAAAA label, or perhaps even better, restoring AAA as a mark of an exceptional game.

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