Earlier this week, ACE COMBAT’s Franchise Director, Kazutoki Kono, took to Bandai Namco’s site to address the current progress of, ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN’s development. Originally slated for release at the end of 2017, the team had decided to move the release back to 2018. This decision was made was the team wanted to ‘devote additional time and effort to perfect and optimize this newest chapter of the ACE COMBAT saga’.

While the delay will be a disappointment to fans of the long running series, Kazutoki gave fans a glimpse of what the game would offer, with the aid of the advancements in modern technology, from both the consumer’s and developer’s standpoint. Highlighting the capabilities of Unreal Engine 4, and hardware like the Playstation VR set, he spoke of the minute details of flight combat, and the ability of experience dogfights in VR.

With more information coming out at E3 this year, where the team plan to debut a non-VR mission from the game, there seems to be a lot to look forward to with the release of the new ACR COMBAT.