While budget does play into what makes a AAA title, it's not the only factor. Star Citizen is Cloud Imperium Games' first game... and it's still not a final release. They are an "indie" shop for all intents and purposes.

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).

While Halo was not Bungie's first game, Bungie was not at all a well-known developer at the time. But I think Halo on the original Xbox was very much a AAA game.