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Bandai Namco Entertainment, ILCA Establish New Company Bandai Namco Aces
posted on by Adriana Hazra
Bandai Namco Entertainment announced on Friday that it and ILCA Inc. have established a new company Bandai Namco Aces. The company, headquartered in Shinjuku, Tokyo, aims to deliver "deep and lasting, high-quality content to fans around the world, including for the Ace Combat series."
Takuya Iwasaki will be president and CEO of the company, and Kazutoki Kono will be the executive vice president. Jun Ikeda, Shinya Sorimachi, and Masatoshi Furubayashi are on the board of directors. Toshifumi Odaka will be the company's auditor.
Bandai Namco Entertainment holds 51% of the company's shares and ILCA holds 49%.
The Ace Combat series are loosely realistic flight shooting games that feature mostly real-world aircraft in a fictional setting officially named "Strangereal." Evoking the modern world and contemporary political entities, the setting pits superpowers in large-scale political struggles, with players taking on the role of fighter pilots in the world's frequent conflicts.
Namco released the first Ace Combat game in 1992. Bandai Namco Games released Ace Combat Infinity as the first free-to-play Ace Combat game for the PlayStation 3 in May 2014. The most recent game in the series, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, shipped in January 2019 for PlayStation 4 (with PlayStation VR support) and Xbox One, and in February 2019 for PC.
Kazutoki Kono announced during a 25th anniversary live stream program for the game franchise that the next Ace Combat entry is in development
Sources: Press release via Gematsu
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.
