It is almost unfairly hard to produce a good AAA title. Brilliant indie games  like Slay the Spire have really low total production costs. We're not talking about 1/10th the cost of a AAA game, not even 1/20th.<br>For how much does Slay the Spire sell? About 1/3rd the price of a AAA game.<br>I'm by no means any economy expert, but this simple calculation shows that producing a profitable AAA title is no joke.<br>This is why publishers resort to financial trickery.,(reply>), The thing is that they don't need to do that. Look at Nintendo which spends a fraction of what other AAA publishers do in their games and still profit plenty. The problem is that the publishers want to appeal to people who don't even like games by injecting realistic graphics and detailed stories in games to attract people who like movies. Also marketing budgets are higher than development budgets which is not needed for the core audience,  but they want to fool non-gamers into buying their games