Is Ace Combat 8 out? Yes — since 1 October, 3 PM PT (2 October in Europe and Japan)

At one instant everywhere: 1 October 2026 at 15:00 Pacific, which is 22:00 UTC, 2 October at 00:00 in central Europe and 07:00 in Japan. Deluxe owners had played since 28 September at the same clock time.

They do not. Steam shows 1 October because a store page renders the unlock on the viewer's own clock and Valve is on Pacific time; Bandai Namco announces 2 October because that is the date in Japan and most of Europe. It is the same moment — switching store region cannot move it earlier.

Released on 23 October 2026, it fixes ten missions that could stall, fail or crash (6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 25, 28 and 30), retunes Ladon on ELITE and above in Mission 15 and the flare count in Mission 28, adds an Async Compute switch under SYSTEM on graphics cards that support it, adjusts key assignments for certain keyboard controls and changes the connection settings for certain peripheral devices. In ACE COMBAT ONLINE it fixes account creation and controller reconnection problems and shortens the ECM, ESM and IEWS special weapons. The mission fix finder on this page lists the fixes by mission.

Some of them. Bandai Namco says it adjusted the key assignments for certain keyboard controls but did not say which, and it has not published the full keyboard and mouse layout either; the BUTTON MAPPING screen in the game shows the current keys. The same update fixed Mission 13, whose cinematic stalled when L was assigned to camera controls.

Yes, three days: 28 September at 15:00 Pacific, the same clock time as the public unlock. That is the full game rather than a trial, which is also why a stick problem found on the 28th costs you three days of flying rather than being discovered at launch.

Only with a ray-tracing graphics card: hardware ray tracing, DirectX 12 with Shader Model 6.6 and an SSD are all listed as requirements. Bandai Namco’s own estimate for the minimum — an RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 6600 XT with 16 GB of RAM — is 1080p upscaled at 30 fps on Low; the recommended RTX 3070 or RX 6800 with 32 GB is 1080p upscaled at 60 fps on Medium. Budget 150 GB of SSD space. Any GTX card, and any Radeon older than the RX 6000 series, falls below the line however fast it is otherwise.

Two sticks are licensed for this game: Thrustmaster’s T.Flight HOTAS Neo Ace Combat 8 Edition (PlayStation/PC and Xbox/PC versions) and HORI’s Ace Combat 8 Flight Stick for PlayStation and PC. Bandai Namco has not published a list of other devices, and on 30 September it said some configuration options that sticks had in Ace Combat 7 are not in Ace Combat 8 yet and that it is working on improvements. Update 1.01.002 on 23 October changed the connection settings for certain peripheral devices without naming them, and Bandai Namco refers questions about how a device behaves to its maker.

Resting centre, outer range and deadzone floor — about five minutes in total, none of it needing the game. The flight-stick check in the Ace Combat 8 lab does the first two while you fly the aircraft with your own stick, which matters more while some of Ace Combat 7’s stick options are missing from the game.

88 on OpenCritic, with 98% of critics recommending it, and 87 on Metacritic when reviews went live — the best-reviewed entry in 25 years, behind only Ace Combat 04 in 2001. None of that changes what your own stick does, which is the part this page can measure.

Yes. Ace Combat 8 comes to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S — the Series S included — and PC through Steam. No PlayStation 4, Xbox One or Nintendo Switch version has been announced.

Because ray tracing is not a setting you can switch off. The game is built on Unreal Engine 5 and requires hardware ray tracing, which rules out every GTX card and every Radeon older than the RX 6000 series. Even Bandai Namco’s own minimum — an RTX 2060 or RX 6600 XT — is rated for 1080p at 30 fps on Low with upscaling, and the recommended RTX 3070 or RX 6800 for 1080p at 60 fps on Medium, again with upscaling.

The two licensed for the game are the ones Bandai Namco names: Thrustmaster’s T.Flight HOTAS Neo Ace Combat 8 Edition and HORI’s Ace Combat 8 Flight Stick. For any other stick on PC no support list has been published, so plug yours into the flight-stick check in the Ace Combat 8 lab first and see whether the browser reads every axis.

On Steam in the US, $69.99 for the standard edition and $89.99 for the Deluxe edition, which adds three days of early access (now over), a season pass voucher and a cosmetic set. The F-14A aircraft costs $4.99 and the cosmetic set $9.99 on their own.

It means ACE COMBAT ONLINE lost its connection to the game server. Bandai Namco’s first step is to synchronise the Windows clock, since a clock that has drifted can break the connection; then try again.

Since 23 October, as its own app: players who got Ace Combat Zero as a pre-order bonus find a standalone version added to their Steam library in stages, and it runs without Ace Combat 8 installed. On the same PC your progress carries over automatically; to move it to another PC, switch Steam Cloud on before the first launch. To stop the launch dialog in Ace Combat 8, choose Play ACE COMBAT 8 with Always use this option, or untick Ace Combat Zero under Properties › DLC. Players who did not get the bonus cannot obtain Zero this way.

Bandai Namco said on 9 October that mission matchmaking can be harder to establish in some setups, and that one cause is players connecting from PCs below the system requirements, which can affect everyone in the same session. It asks players to play on Windows 11 and to install the game on an SSD, both of which the requirements list. Update 1.01.002 on 23 October fixed several ACE COMBAT ONLINE problems, among them account creation and reconnecting a controller at mission start, but its notes do not mention matchmaking.

Bandai Namco is still working on a fix. Until then it suggests the graphics driver version the game recommends when it starts, at least 16 GB free on the SSD it is installed on, and Windows virtual memory switched on — and, since 16 October, more of it: memory-related crashes were rarer in its tests with about 48 GB of RAM and virtual memory combined, so with 32 GB of RAM set virtual memory to 16 GB or more, and with 16 GB of RAM to 32 GB or more. It calls this a workaround rather than a fix and is working to cut the game’s memory use. Update 1.01.002 on 23 October fixed three specific crashes — Mission 11's chain explosion, sorting SELECT AIRCRAFT by a role you own no aircraft for, and first opening AIRCRAFT TREE while holding Left with certain DLC aircraft — and improved stability in cinematic scenes and replays; Bandai Namco has not said the memory workaround is no longer needed.

It can help. On 2 November 2026 Bandai Namco said asynchronous computation can affect stability on certain graphics card configurations, and that players who crash may see improvements by setting Async Compute to OFF in the SYSTEM menu of the Steam version. The option is greyed out on cards it does not suit, and Bandai Namco is still investigating other causes.