Market & Industry Trends

AAA Games
AAA Games/Triple A Games are basically games that have a very high budget, usually to help ensure a successful game.
Simply games that everyone has atleast heard of. People have been known to argue for hours about which one of the many AAA games are best, therefore each AAA game must be up-to scratch to impress as many people as possible, especially fans who gone as far as to argue for it.

When a AAA game disappoints fans, the entire series can develop a bad reputation quickly, although some AAA games have also been ridiculed for being far too similar to the previous games before it, just adding in some minor features or updating the graphics. 

Franchises

A franchise is basically a massive series of movies, or games that have grown popular over time. franchises usually have T-shirts, coffee mugs, models, collectors editions and similar.

Just like triple AAA games, the expectations are very high, and so is the budget, Franchises have the great advantage of having many dedicated fans who will likely buy any game that has the franchise title in its name.

Financial

A budget is basically the amount of money that is acceptable to spend on the game in question.

More popular games like Call of duty, Halo or Fifa often have a high spending budget, as they safely make a lot of profit as well. Since the reason for companies to create a game is to make money, the budget is important, as a high budget could either cause the producers to lose money if the game does not sell well enough. However it may cause the game to be vastly improved than if it were to have a minor budget, and therefore sell a lot of copies, and making them much more money.

This does not mean however that all games must have a large budget in order to become popular, some of the simpler games with lesser budgets have become very renowned and has made a major profit.

 DRM
   DRM/Digital Rights Management is a way of restricting the second hand market. Console games now come with passwords or codes they must type in in order to get access to certain features within that game, this may be multiplayer access, special weaponry, armor, level packs, or simply cosmetic features.
This is mainly to prevent people from making fake copies and buying second-hand games, as if they do so, they are unlikely to get the full experience the game would normally offer.
The same codes are available to buy with DLC, making sure the game developers or producers get a full payment, or atleast a fair amount toward the natural price.



Royalties paid to developers:

While a payment to employ a trade mark licence is a royalty, it is accompanied by a "guided usage manual", the use of which may be audited from time to time. However, this becomes a supervisory task when the mark is used in a franchise agreement for the sale of goods or services carrying the reputation of the mark. For a franchise, it is said, a fee is paid, even though it comprises a royalty element.

To be a franchise, the agreement must be a composite of the items:

• the right to use a trade mark to offer, sell or distribute goods or services (the trademark element)
• payment of a required royalty or fee (the fee element)
• significant assistance or control with respect to the franchisee’s business (the supervisory element)

One of the above three items must not apply for the franchise agreement to be considered a trade mark agreement (and its laws and conventions). In a franchise, for which there is no convention, laws apply concerning training, brand support, operating systems/support and technical support in a written format ("Disclosure")