The prevailing attitude at big studios appears to be that the triple-A market is shrinking.

Today Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat told Games Industry that the premium game space was getting crowded out by fewer, larger titles.

"On one end of the spectrum you will have all the big, AAA blockbuster games that [offer] more and more production values, more value for the players, but there will be fewer of them taking a bigger chunk of the market," he said.

"Meaning there is no room for B-games, if I should say so, which proves the point of quality. I think that companies that put quality and consumer value as a primary focus, as we've been doing at Ubisoft, will enjoy great success."

Mallat’s words echo those of his Ubisoft peer, Toronto manager Jade Raymond.

Speaking with The Guardian, Raymond said there was now only room for about ten triple-A releases a year.

According to Raymond, this was because the risks associated with making a triple-A title had reduced the number that could be viable any given year.

“I think there's still room for really great triple-A games that can, despite the budget, retain the classic model of expecting people to pay in one big chunk. There's still room for that,” she said.

“But the big publishers have to be honest with themselves. There's only room for – let's say – 10 successful titles a year on those sorts of budgets.

“So you have to go all-in on those; you have to be sure you'll have a hit, and when you make it you have to invest everything to make sure it's amazing.”

In addition, free-to-play and mobile segments had fractured the market, she added.

“Perhaps one of the reasons that smartphone and casual games have become so popular is that a higher percentage of gamers have less time and want to play their games in small chunks; and a higher percentage want to play against other people rather than alone in front of their TV or at their PC for several hours.”

It isn’t just Ubisoft coming to this realisation. Avalanche Studios CEO Stefan Ljungqvist told Gamasutra that although big-budget games would never disappear completely, those that remained would need to get more creative to capture the attention of gamers.

“Maybe over the course of the past five years, developers have pitched creative or more artistic games, but publishers had been more careful of betting a lot on those games, because they’re associated with some risk,” he said

“But maybe now they can [take more risks] because they need to be more unique in the marketplace.”

“Maybe we don’t need forty first-person shooters,” the Just Cause developer added.