Bandai Namco announced that Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve has already sold over 1 million copies worldwide. The arcade flight simulator reached this milestone faster than any previous installment in the 30-year-old franchise.

With a slight delay, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella published statistics on the U.S. gaming market for August 2026. According to the data, Americans are purchasing new releases well, yet this does not prevent the overall spending from continuing to decline.

Microsoft has announced the establishment of another division within XBOX, named XP.

Electronic Arts (EA) faced challenges following the sale of the company to a consortium of investors. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, bondholders have lodged complaints against EA, demanding more money than the face value of their securities.

In the section “Investor/Publisher Wanted” — IT BEGAN, a single-player tactical horror shooter by CODE84 from Tashkent. The team is seeking $40,000 to complete the demo version and prepare the project for negotiations with publishers and investors.

It provides access only to the lectures on October 16 — the second day of the WN Yerevan’26. The cost is approximately 12,200 drams (30 dollars). The schedule includes lectures on game creation using the “Lord of the Rings” and Warhammer 40,000 franchises.

Game designer Richard Garriott announced that in 2027 he will regain control over the Ultima franchise. He will not have to pay anything for this — Electronic Arts (EA) will transfer the rights completely free of charge.

In Russia’s northern capital, a museum dedicated to the history of video games has opened. It spans numerous iconic eras of the gaming industry, from the earliest arcade games to modern projects for VR and AR headsets.

Social networks, by themselves, generate a rather modest number of wishlists. This was confirmed by the CTO of the Balancy service, Andrey Apanasik, who recently announced his own game called Pocket Cat Desktop.

As a result, its valuation reached $190 million.

Sportradar has reached an agreement to sell Atrium Sports. The buyer will be Teamworks Innovations, which will pay $170 million.

In 2020, veterans of Respawn Entertainment and Infinity Ward founded the studio Gravity Well. Six years later, the team faced the threat of closure.

A month ago, it was reported that the studio Bit Reactor had put 80% of its staff on unpaid leave. Now its CEO, Greg Foertsch, announced the return of some employees.

Google Corporation has decided to compete with Roblox. It announced Playground — a browser-based platform that allows making games using prompts.

Ace Combat is in many ways a unique franchise, and the release of the new installment has become an excellent opportunity to discuss the state of the flight game market. We have analyzed a large amount of data and prepared a detailed report—complete with illustrative tables, graphs, and some not-so-encouraging conclusions.

On September 25, Electronic Arts released the newest installment in their line of football simulators, EA Sports FC 27, into full release. The title had an exceptionally impressive start and has already generated more revenue on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox than any other paid game released in 2026.

Yellow Brick Games is another gaming studio that has decided to downsize its staff. The layoffs were highlighted by journalist Chris Kerr.

Sony Corporation has devised a way to make non-player characters (NPCs) more realistic. They have filed a patent application for a system that considers gamers’ actions and, based on this, alters NPC reactions.

Former CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, might have returned to the gaming industry. He has taken a position on the leadership team of Skydance — a corporation formed by the merger of Warner Bros. and Paramount.