Ace Combat is not a franchise most people associate with social hubs, battle passes, and raid-style missions. But here we are. Bandai Namco has fully unveiled Ace Combat Online, the live-service multiplayer companion coming bundled with Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve at launch — and it’s significantly more ambitious than anything the series has attempted before.
Wings of Theve releases October 2, 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam, with Deluxe Edition holders getting early access from September 28. Here’s a complete breakdown of everything Ace Combat Online includes.
The Air Base — A 100-Player Social Hub
The starting point for the entire online experience is the Air Base, a virtual lobby that can hold up to 100 players simultaneously. Players enter as customisable mercenary pilot avatars and use this space as the home between missions — matchmaking, chatting with pilots from around the world, equipping aircraft, and planning sorties.
It’s more than just a menu screen, though. The Air Base includes a jukebox where you can listen to music from older Ace Combat games — classic OSTs going back through the franchise’s history. There are also arcade machines running retro Bandai Namco games, with Pac-Man confirmed and more titles from Namco’s back catalogue to be revealed. There’s a supply shop, the Ace Combat Store for in-game purchases, and dedicated flight training areas for up to four players to warm up together.
It’s an unusual feature for a flight combat game, and producer Manabu Shimomoto explained the thinking behind it directly in a conversation with Eurogamer at Gamescom 2026. “Ace Combat 7 was a success, and because of its success it created a lot of fans globally,” he said. “However, due to the lack of opportunities for fans to get together, we received a lot of feedback that these fans wanted to meet up with others. To live up to that expectation, we decided to create this digital lobby.”
The social hub is, in short, a direct response to a fanbase that coalesced around Ace Combat 7 but had no shared space to exist in. Shimomoto added: “Ace Combat 7 sold seven-and-a-half-million copies, proving it was a successful game and it was played for a long time. Likewise, we want Ace Combat 8 to be played for a long time, and for it to be a long-term success, we wanted to create this opportunity.”
The Core Modes — Co-Op Assault and Co-Op Warfare
The two main multiplayer pillars sit on either side of the PvE/PvPvE divide.
Co-Op Assault (PvE)
The more straightforward of the two. Two teams of four go up against computer-controlled enemies, competing to earn the highest score by wiping out enemies and clearing objectives. The missions are score-based and feature varied enemy types and objectives — but the opposing team is not actively hunting you. Both squads are racing the same targets, not each other’s pilots.
Co-Op Warfare (PvPvE)
This is where it gets more interesting. Two teams of four face off in a genuinely hybrid format. Each team has allied ground, air, and sea NPC units supporting their side, while the opposing human team is also present and trying to take you down.
The key mechanic is a threat level system. As you take out enemies, your threat level rises — which means you earn more points for your kills, but you also become a more valuable target for the opposing team. Taking down a high-threat enemy pilot earns the other side more points than finishing off someone who’s been playing cautiously. It creates a tension loop where aggressive play is rewarded with increased rewards but also increased risk, encouraging teams to think tactically about when to escalate and when to cool down.
Emergency Missions — Limited-Time Events
Beyond the core two modes, Ace Combat Online introduces Emergency Missions as limited-time events with their own specific structure. These split into two formats:
- Scramble: Your team of four takes on an NPC-controlled rival squad in a structured engagement
- Emergency Sortie: Eight players go up against set-piece battles drawn from Ace Combat’s history — described as raid-style PvE engagements that recreate iconic moments from across the franchise. This is essentially the equivalent of a raid mechanic, giving groups a large, structured challenge with built-in spectacle
Emergency Sorties in particular look like a meaningful reason to keep playing long after launch. Revisiting iconic battles from the series’ history in an eight-player co-op format is both a smart nostalgia hook and a genuine content pillar for the long-term player base.
Limited-Time PvP Modes
For competitive players specifically, there are also limited-time PvP events cycling through the Ace Combat Online schedule:
- 4v4 Team Battle: Straightforward team deathmatch in the air
- Eight-Player Free-For-All: Full chaos mode, every pilot for themselves
These modes may come with various aircraft restrictions or player caps to help balance engagements, though specific details on those systems haven’t been fully laid out yet.
Progression and the Ace Pass
Ace Combat Online runs its own separate progression system, completely independent from the single-player campaign save data. Playing online earns levels that unlock aircraft, special weapons, and aircraft parts. Aircraft themselves can be customised with abilities and cosmetics that unlock through actually using those planes — a mechanic that encourages players to commit to specific airframes rather than hopping between whatever seems strongest.
The seasonal element comes through the Ace Pass — Ace Combat 8’s battle pass system. Each season lasts two months, with both a free tier and a paid premium tier offering different rewards. The aircraft available in premium tiers will be made available for standalone purchase after the season ends, which addresses the usual frustration of time-limited cosmetics disappearing permanently — a reasonable design choice that should reduce player anxiety around missing content.
The whole structure — seasonal content, a social hub, ongoing progression separate from the campaign, limited-time events — positions Ace Combat Online firmly in live-service territory. Bandai Namco has been explicit that the goal is long-tail retention, directly mirroring what happened organically with Ace Combat 7.
Why This Approach Makes Sense for Ace Combat 8
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown was a genuine phenomenon. Released in January 2019, it has sold 7.5 million copies as of mid-2026 — more than one in three copies sold across the entire franchise’s three-decade history. The game saw a seven-year climb through 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, and beyond, with the 2024 Nintendo Switch port adding another meaningful sales bump. It became a “long-tail title” in Bandai Namco’s own terminology — a game that kept selling and being played well after its initial launch window.
The problem was that all those players were playing in relative isolation. Ace Combat 7’s multiplayer, while present, was fairly traditional competitive matchmaking without the kind of social architecture that builds community. The fans were out there — 7.5 million of them — but there was nowhere for them to gather.
Ace Combat Online is explicitly designed to solve that. The Air Base gives the community a shared space. The Emergency Sortie raids give eight players a reason to coordinate. The seasonal Ace Pass creates regular return points. And the jukebox and arcade machines are a way of saying to longtime franchise fans: this is a space that acknowledges your history with these games.
Whether it works in practice depends heavily on player uptake and how well the content cadence holds up over time. But the intention is clear and the design is coherent — games that invest seriously in keeping their communities together long-term have shown real staying power in recent years.
Cross-Play and Platform Availability
Ace Combat Online supports full cross-play between PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC players, which is an important detail for a mode that requires matchmaking to function reliably across its more specialist event types. Combining the player pool across all three platforms means that even the limited-time Emergency Missions and PvP events should be able to find viable matches rather than sitting in empty lobbies.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve launches October 2, 2026. There’s no Nintendo Switch 2 version announced. Deluxe Edition holders get early access from September 28, giving them the first run through the Air Base before the full player base arrives. October is shaping up to be one of the busiest months in gaming, but a franchise returning for its first mainline entry in seven years — with its most ambitious online offering ever — is going to cut through regardless.
