Unless there's solid proof of it, I'd generally take the benefit of the doubt and assume that any AI textures were placeholders that weren't screened properly. I get that there's a lot of negativity towards the game re: TGA, but I don't think you should let some random awards show influence you.

It's Carrom (grew up playing it) and that seems to be Pakistan, so technically South Asia, not Middle East.

Random fun fact: Abbottabad is where Osama bin Laden was hiding out when he was killed.

Expedition 33, a AA game by a new studio, had an estimated budget of around $30M. That's 2,500x Expedition 33s.

A typical AAA game has a budget between $100 and 200 million, so it's 385-770 AAA games. I don't even think there are that many AAA games.

Lucia from DMC2?

From what I've heard, the requirements were likely MS' attempt to stop OEMs from putting Windows 11 on crappy hardware, in order to help reduce Windows' reputation as being "slow".

Unfortunately, someone at the company decided to make this apply to consumers, not just OEMs.

Ichinose had to make sure those curves were as perfect as possible.

From what I've heard, they had used a UE5 asset pack for some stuff as placeholders, one of which included AI assets. It's possible they weren't aware it was AI until launch.