AAA status is usually reserved for big studios that produce many games of high quality(ish), and yes, with big budgets (GTA5 cost over $265 MM to create).
A parallel would be a big budget movie produced by Sony vs. Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars was produced by successful people within the film industry, but it's not on the same level as a full production.
> $105 million (and counting) in dev costs
Well, that's not in dev costs... that's money raised... and they're trying to bootstrap a company at the same time, so not all of that money will even go to the game development (unlike a big budget big studio development where literally every penny of their quoted budget is in development cost as the business is already established and earning on it's own).
