Bandai Namco has announced that the last entry in its Ace Combat series, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, has sold over 7 million copies worldwide. Celebrating this milestone, the publisher has released commemorative wallpapers. Director and producer Kazutoki Kono also posted a message on social media thanking Ace Combat fans for still playing it. The title was launched on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and eventually also made its way to Nintendo Switch.
“Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown has reached its 7th anniversary since its release, and has surpassed 7 million units sold worldwide,” wrote Kono (via Google Translate). “We are deeply grateful that so many people have continued to play the game for so long. We look forward to seeing you again in the next sky.”
It looks like it took Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown just a year to sell a million copies, since Bandai Namco had last touted having sold more than 6 million copies back in January 2025. This newest milestone has likely pushed overall sales for the Ace Combat franchise to over 22 million.
In the meantime, Bandai Namco has also announced the next title in the franchise, dubbed Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. The game was announced during The Game Awards 2025, and takes place in the year 2029 on the franchise’s traditional setting of Strangereal.
More details about the upcoming title were revealed through an interview last month, where Kono revealed that development on Wings of Theve had started back in 2020. According to producer Manabu Shimomoto, the upcoming title will also hang on to what he described as the three pillars that form the identity of the franchise: the exhilaration of freely flying through the sky, the excitement of shooting down enemies based on your own judgment, and sense of accomplishment from overcoming challenges. “We kept the things fans have loved for 30 years, and thought about what changes would please them,” he said.
Considering the power of modern hardware, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will also be making use of more modern technologies. The title’s development involves using a new in-house engine that will work alongside Unreal Engine 5 to generate the in-game clouds. The new in-house engine, dubbed Cloudly, was made to replace third-party tool truSky.
On the storytelling front, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will also feature first-person cutscenes that all take place in-engine, allowing players to grasp finer details of the world around them while they converse with other characters. The feature was described as giving players the sense of having a key role in the story. “By deliberately looking away, you may discover new things, such as what other characters are doing in the background while the conversation is happening,” Kono said about the new cutscenes.
The story of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will revolve around the player taking on the eponymous callsign of “Wings of Theve”, and working alongside the crew of the refugee ship Endurance. The ship itself is also home to refugees from the Federation of Central Usea after it suffered from a recent attack. The title doesn’t yet have a release date, but is expected to come out this year on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
