With the advent of technologies like AR, VR, and more, the gaming industry is thriving at an indispensable rate. Depending on their interest and choice, players can play casual, role-playing, action, adventure, and other types of games. Among all the popular genres, AAA games are the ones that have been grabbing the attention of players for a long.
AAA or Triple-A games are the type of video or mobile games that are developed by mid-sized or big publishers with a large production and marketing budget. God of War, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and many other popular games fall under the category of AAA. These types of games are highly addictive, entertaining, and have interactive interfaces and stunning graphics.
Learn all about the development and marketing cost of a game that requires high investment. Plus, you’ll know how much does it cost to develop an in-game ad for this game?
Cost of Developing an AAA Game
Calculating the cost of AAA game development depends on a variety of factors:
- On which platform (Android, iOS, or other) you want to release the app
- Size and experience of the mobile game development company or dedicated developers
- Complexity of the gaming app
- Tools and technologies used for the development
- Geographic location of the development company
- UI/UX design of the app
- Time needed to develop the app
- Type of AAA game
Even when you don’t decide on these factors, you can expect the game cost to be around USD 50 million to USD 150 million. Don’t be surprised as we are going to list the reasons why the AAA game app development costs this much.
Graphics
Creating an interactive and engaging interface with detailing and high-resolution is not a cakewalk. It takes a considerable level of expertise and great efforts of the designers, which ultimately impacts the overall budget of the game development. In other words, to create stunning and visually-appealing graphics, you will need to hire game developers with rich experience and expertise in UI/UX designing.
Tools Used For The Development
To meet the exact game development requirements and deliver superior quality work, AAA game development involves using high-level tools, which costs a bit high. Sometimes developers use costly tools that come up with additional features to minimize the development efforts and speed up the development process.
Besides these tools, the powerful and advanced gaming engines required for the game development are generally licensed at a steep cost. You have to have top technologies integrated into the AAA games to deliver an unmatchable experience to your targeted audience.
The Voice Element
The voice element plays a pivotal role in the success of an AAA game. Embedding the same doesn’t come at a low price.
Expertise on the Technologies
Since the development of AAA games need top-notch technologies and tools, a developer needs to have a significant level of experience and expertise to use them. It is evident that the more the expertise of the developers, the more they would charge for their work.
Testing
To make an AAA or any other game functionally sound, each development module needs to be tested properly. And, since the AAA development process is big, you need a large quality assurance team to ensure the flawlessness of the game.
Marketing
Selling your AAA game requires the right marketing strategies, which further needs an experienced professional and top-level marketing tactics and advertising campaigns. All these contribute to the overall cost of the development.
Launch and Post-Launch Support
Once the game is developed, you need to fulfill the platform requirements to make it ready for the launch. Sometimes, this may cost you a bit. Besides this, you also need a support team to look after the maintenance part of the app to ensure its flawlessness and add new features regularly. This is what we call as post-launch support, which also needs lots of investment.
After reading about the AAA game development in detail, if you want to build it, then reach out to a trusted and experienced game development company. Share your game development idea or provide the company with your specific game requirements. To choose the best company, it is advised to look into their previous work or check their portfolio.
Reviewing their clients’ testimonials and feedback would be a cherry on the top. Don’t forget to do a little research to ensure that your AAA game app development project is in expert hands. After all, you don’t want to end up with getting your budget limits exceeded by the end of your app development project.
Final Words
Games that require high development and marketing cost (somewhere from USD 50 to USD 100+ million) and need years to develop are considered as AAA games. Moreover, it needs around 2000 to 15000 developers to create an AAA game for different platforms.
Now, you must be having an idea of the reasons why the cost of development is so high. Read the complete article to know the other factors that decide the cost of AAA game development. On the other hand, if you want to build such a game then reach out to a unity game development company with at least a decade of experience in the same field.
