"Looks like it got a little hot out there, sir!"
Wing Commander (1990) is often considered one of the earliest "AAA" games, even though the term itself didn’t exist yet.
Chris Roberts’ game reportedly cost about five times more to develop than a typical hit title of its era, making it by far the most expensive game at the time, and raising eyebrows everywhere.
It featured very advanced graphics, digitized speech, a cinematic story campaign with branching paths, countless cutscenes, and a “Star Wars in space” feel that made it stand out massively. At times, it genuinely felt like you were starring in an interactive movie rather than "just" playing a game.
Its success raised the bar for the entire industry. Publishers were now forced to invest far more in production quality, bigger budgets, and marketing. Wing Commander sold millions of copies, and helped establish the space sim genre.
The game not only paved the way for even larger budgets in its own sequels, but it also pressured other developers and publishers to keep up. Whether this was ultimately good for the industry could still debated today.
On one hand, it started an era of cinematic, high-production games. On the other, it made it significantly harder for small teams and low-budget titles to compete, effectively throttling the kind of creativity that had been a hallmark of 1980s game development.
With the birth of Wing Commander, the industry had entered a whole new territory.