Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve crossed one million copies sold just over a week after its October 2, 2026 launch, making it the fastest-selling game in the franchise. Bandai Namco confirmed the figure on October 9, and the milestone lands alongside the strongest critical reception the series has seen since 2001.
Quick answer: Wings of Theve is the series’ fastest game to reach 1 million sales and its second-highest rated entry, trailing only 2001’s Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies.
The 1 million sales milestone
Bandai Namco announced that Ace Combat 8 passed one million copies worldwide faster than any previous title in the series. The publisher shared the news across its regional accounts, thanking players for helping the game reach “record-breaking heights.” The pace stands out given how niche the arcade flight-combat genre is compared with the shooters and open-world games it launched beside.
That speed follows seven years of waiting. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown arrived in 2019 and went on to sell more than seven million copies, so there was a large, patient audience ready when the sequel landed. Before launch, Wings of Theve had already topped Steam’s US Top Sellers chart on pre-order and early-access revenue alone, climbing 55 spots to first ahead of its full release.
You can see the publisher’s announcement on Bandai Namco’s official account.
Where it ranks on reviews
Wings of Theve sits at a Metacritic score in the 86 to 88 range depending on platform, with an OpenCritic average around 88 to 89. That makes it the second-best reviewed mainline Ace Combat, one point behind the long-standing series leader.
| Game | Score | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (2001) | 89 | Series high |
| Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve (2026) | 87–88 | Second best |
The headline number shifts a little by platform, mostly because each version drew a different mix and number of reviews.
| Platform | Metacritic | Critic reviews |
|---|---|---|
| PlayStation 5 | 87 | 65+ |
| Xbox Series X | 88 | 8 |
| PC | 86 | 36 |
The PlayStation 5 page carries the deepest sample and the Generally Favorable label. The Xbox figure rests on a much smaller pool of reviews, so its slightly higher number reflects which outlets covered that version first rather than a meaningfully better game. The user score has also trended high, sitting at 8.8 across early ratings.
What critics praised and flagged
Reviewers consistently singled out the same strengths, and the complaints clustered just as tightly. None of the criticism was aimed at the flying itself.
Strengths
- Moment-to-moment air combat, described as the series at its most confident.
- Dynamic clouds and weather, treated as a gameplay mechanic rather than backdrop.
- Its orchestral music is among the aspects most often singled out for praise.
- Characters, cinematic first-person sequences, and a lengthy, varied campaign.
Weak points
- Cutscene pacing that slows the run between missions.
- Lock-on and target selection in dense fights, the most common mechanical gripe.
- After the campaign ends, solo players have little endgame content to return to.
The cloud work comes from Cloudly, a proprietary engine built internally to generate the heavily layered formations that aerial combat needs. It runs alongside Unreal Engine 5, which handles rendering and lighting, while the clouds give players immediate feedback on speed and altitude as they punch through each layer.
The Steam launch record
On PC, 52,694 concurrent Steam players were recorded on October 3, the franchise’s largest Steam debut by a wide margin. Launch activity kept pace with sales and reflected the same pent-up demand that had driven the game up the charts before release.
The Belkan War pre-order issue
The rollout was not entirely smooth. The pack-in title Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, offered as a pre-order bonus, was not a standalone release on PC the way it was on consoles. That difference caused a round of related problems and backlash from players who expected parity across platforms.
Online modes in this entry
Wings of Theve ships with a fuller online suite than past games. It includes co-op PvE modes, PvPvE modes, and a hub social space where players can gather and chat between matches. Some reviews gave the multiplayer a more mixed reception than the campaign, with early players noting that matches can end faster than expected.
Taken together, the numbers put Wings of Theve in an unusual spot: the best-reviewed Ace Combat in a quarter-century, the fastest to a million copies, yet still one point shy of the critical peak the series set back in 2001. For a franchise that returned after a seven-year gap, that is a comfortable position to land in.
