Stray pulled off AAA quality on a tiny budget using something loved by a lot of people (cat protagonist) but it had a number of advantages, primarily you don’t need licensing fees for cats, the dev time was deep into “purely a labor of love” length, and I don’t think it came out near any releases of a superior direct competitor. Any adventure epic right now had to contend with FF16 and people still messing around with Tears of the Kingdom.
Stray pulled off AAA quality on a tiny budget using something loved by a lot of people (cat protagonist) but it had a number of advantages, primarily you don’t need licensing fees for cats, the dev time was deep into “purely a labor of love” length, and I don’t think it came out near any releases of a superior direct competitor. Any adventure epic right now had to contend with FF16 and people still messing around with Tears of the Kingdom.