Okay after examining all of the comments, reading RAD's comment and the wiki, AAA has more to do with projected revenue from a title than the actual cost. However, it should be noted that in order to get those 'movie blockbuster' type returns it is expected that a lot of money is spent on the title in the same way that it would be spent on creating the movie.

"AAA is not an acronym, but a way to classify games, in some cases, referring to it as an equivalent to a movie blockbuster.
As the years progressed and during the new millennium, many publishers started to consider their games to be AAA even before their release, and justified this decision through huge development and marketing budgets."

So, AAA is nothing more these days than a term that a publisher assigns to a big project that they expect to produce returns. As such, more money can be invested in these titles.

The problem is that not all supposed AAA games sell like AAA games.

The problem with the term AAA is when gamers started using it, they labeled this and that AAA or not AAA and it became pointless. Budget usually returns quality(to some degree) but that's often not the case overall as we've seen many times before.

Are you people for real?

http://gameindustry.about.c...

http://www.gamedev.net/topi...

"I've worked on a few supposed "AAA" games, and not for one instant would I believe it means quality. I've played far higher-quality games that didn't have that label, regardless of genre differences.

Read This -----> "The press and marketing wants you to believe it means quality, and they're succeeding quite well. In reality it just means budget and production values, how much "manpower" went in it and how marketable it is."

Why are people trying to define it so strictly?

It's like Indie, it's become a loosely defined word that can earn it's meaning and be defined by many different aspects or combinations of aspects.

AAA can mean large publisher or large budget or quality and more or any combination.
Indie can mean no publisher small budget small studio and more or any combination.

Exactly lol. "B-movie" means it's a budget movie. It has nothing to do with quality. There are AAA funded games that are complete ass.

The Order was AAA.

@Morganfell

This is no longer 2006. Wikipedia has been a reliable source of information for a very long time. Much more reliable than Encyclopedias. Mind you I have an entire shelf of them that contain a lot of WRONG information. And if you're that anal about it, go read the freaking sources at the bottom.

Wikipedia still continues to be inaccurate as hell.

http://www.techtimes.com/ar...

That is just one example. Try researching the continued issues with Wikipedia. No one is being anal when they despise inaccuracy. Maybe you enjoy skewed or outright deceptive information. I do not. It is laughable you accuse me of being anal when you are the one that enjoys getting screwed by misleading information. The fact it has happened in other forms of reference is no excuse for it to occur elsewhere.