// KOTAKU — GAMING
After Fan Outrage, Bandai Namco Will Make Ace Combat Zero A Standalone Game
Ace Combat 0: The Belkan WarAce Combat 8: Wings of Theve
Bandai Namco has seemingly heard the cries of PC Ace Combat 8 players and is taking action. On the game’s Steam page (as spotted by Wario64), the studio has announced that it will make Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War available as a standalone app.
Bandai Namco is updating the Ace Combat 0 preorder bonus on Steam as a standalone application (currently users have to download Ace Combat 8 and launch AC0 through loading AC8).
— Wario64 (@wario64.bsky.social) 2026-10-13T12:44:35.175Z
Players who pre-ordered Ace Combat 8 on either PC or console got The Belkan War, one of the franchise’s most celebrated titles first released back in 2006 on the PS2, as one of the bonuses. On console, the bonus was provided as its own game, able to be booted up separately from AC 8 with its own achievements and activity log. On PC, however, the two were pasted together, upsetting players for a host of reasons that they were none too shy about sharing on the game’s Steam page.
Now it seems Bandai Namco plans to address that error, sharing that the process is in the final stages of quality assurance and compatibility testing for an imminent but as yet unknown release date. The devs also said that the plan is to have Zero‘s save data transfer so players won’t have to start all over once the standalone application launches.
That snafu aside, Ace Combat 8 is generally doing quite well. Earlier this month, Bandai Namco shared that the game has sold over a million copies since its October 2nd release date, making it the fastest-selling game in the franchise, and its second-best reviewed. There are still some lingering PC stability issues players say cause numerous crashes, but the devs are apparently working on that too.
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Ace Combat 0: The Belkan War is a standalone game on console, but works like a DLC on PC
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