Triple-A (AAA) is the shorthand for blockbuster-scale games. Reflecting on how Grand Theft Auto 6 reverberates across the entire market, Devolver Digital co-founder Nigel Lowrie went a step further, calling it a quintuple-A (AAAAA) game.

In a recent interview with IGN, Lowrie argued that GTA 6 is a potential AAAAA game—on a scale and scope that makes it incomparable to anything else. He added that it monopolizes attention across the market, not just through cultural impact but in every conversation around games. Adam Lieb of the game-marketing firm Gamesight likewise said that for the past year and a half, the GTA 6 release date has been at the center of nearly every discussion, underscoring just how dominant the topic has become.

Lowrie’s AAAAA framing suggests GTA 6 isn’t merely a high-quality, big-budget production; it’s a mega-project with a symbolic heft that extends beyond the industry itself.

The term “AAA” emerged in the late 1990s to distinguish large-scale projects with substantial development and marketing budgets from conventional releases. With the leap to 3D graphics in 1997, Final Fantasy VII—backed by high-end cinematics, direction, and marketing—is often cited as an early exemplar. From there, franchises such as Call of Duty, GTA, Halo, and Fallout carried the AAA banner and heralded the era of blockbuster games.

As development costs and production values continued to climb, more and more projects came to be described as AAA. Some companies even began touting “AAAA.” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot labeled Skull and Bones a AAAA game, and Microsoft used the phrase “AAAA studio” in hiring materials for The Initiative, the team tasked with the Perfect Dark reboot.

However, Skull and Bones delivered results that disappointed relative to its investment, and The Initiative was shut down without ever releasing Perfect Dark. Even as some argue for finer distinctions beyond AAA, these outcomes have fostered a climate in which few are eager to wield such labels lightly.

Whether GTA 6 will satisfy expectations that have climbed to rarefied heights won’t be clear until it ships. But considering the outsized shockwave GTA 5 sent through the medium, calling GTA 6 an AAAAA game doesn’t feel like a stretch.

This article was translated from the original that appeared on INVEN.