Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-114.4.79.131-20151130162201/@comment-1824272-20151130230831

Chinese data miners have been mining data from Ace Combat Infinity updates for over a year and a half. The most popular one was the Update 1.03 leak that we have a page dedicated to. They're reliable.

I made a long post on reddit about this. I would advise reading what I posted there:

Here's what we know. Chinese dataminers uncovered evidence of a Challenge Event starting sometime in early December. This Challenge Event is supposedly centered around an emblem "revealed in Ace Combat 7's trailer at PlayStation Experience 2015."

The rest of this post will assume that the above is true, but please understand that we cannot verify the validity of the above statements. For those who don't know, PlayStation Experience is a Sony-hosted event that ran for the first time in December 2014 - this is the second time PSX has run. It's basically an E3 event centered solely around PlayStation. The big announcement that will likely be shown at PSX 2015 is the PS4 being able to emulate PS2 games with upscaled res and trophies.

Like at E3, PlayStation will have a special "keynote conference" thing. This is expected to start at 10:30 AM Pacific U.S. Time on December 5, which is when the event starts. That translates to 1:30 PM Eastern U.S. Time, and 6:30 PM UTC. I trust you guys to take it from there. (If/when PlayStation announces the time for sure, I'll update this section.) PlayStation Experience is not a platform for a short teaser trailer with "random scenes" like we had with Ace Combat Infinity. Even if you search up "playstation experience 2014 teaser", the teasers you'll find are for things like Until Dawn and Shovel Knight, which had much further explanations at the Keynote (and, in Until Dawn's case, actual gameplay).

However, I doubt Ace Combat 7 is done, and I also doubt it's coming early 2016. We probably won't get every detail we want, and we won't see everything we'll want to see. But the trailer and presentation for it, if it shows up at the Keynote conference, should be more than a random mishmosh of cutscenes like Infinity's first teaser. What's in a name? Ace Combat 7 was mentioned explicitly by the Chinese dataminers. Not "the next Ace Combat", not "the continuation of Infinity's story" - it was clearly stated as Ace Combat 7.

The last time we had an Ace Combat game with a number in the title was 9 years ago, when Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation released on the Xbox 360. Every game before and including AC6 was in Strangereal, the fan-named universe in which the old games take place. After AC6, we had X, X$2''$ (named as such in Japan), Assault Horizon, Cross Rumble, and Infinity''. Yes, X and Cross Rumble were also in Strangereal, but they were not console releases; they were handheld. The others were all in the real world, or an alternate version of it.

Others may disagree with me, and you're obviously free to; I want an Infinity sequel as much as the next guy who liked Bunker Shot's ending. But I personally believe that AC7 will have nothing to do with Infinity or any other real-world games. It has a number in the name. This means another story in Strangereal on a console. AC7 is getting a trailer at PlayStation Experience, and it'll be the first time we see it (as well as the first time most of the general public hears anything about it). Not E3. Not Tokyo Game Show. PlayStation Experience. This means one of two things:

1. Like Street Fighter V, AC7 will be exclusive to PS4 and PC on launch. 2. AC7 will be exclusive to PS4 on launch.

We can't say anything about whether it'd be a timed exclusive or a permanent exclusive. We can't say for sure that it won't get an Xbox One port down the line. But this means it'll start off being a PlayStation exclusive.

As for whether it'll be on PS4, PS3, or both... I can't say that for sure either. According to PlayStation Lifestyle, the only PS3 game releasing in 2016 that isn't also coming to PS4 is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. And I don't think that's enough to worry anyone that AC7 will be exclusive to PS3. AC7 will release on PS4, but whether it also releases on PS3 is completely up in the air. For the sake of everyone who only went back to the PS3 for Infinity but don't have enough for a PS4, I hope AC7 will also release on PS3. How about a release date? Consider Ace Combat Infinity. It took them 1.5 years to create the game (development started in early 2012) before they had a trailer out. AC7 will have been in development for at least half a year, maybe more, by the time PSX rolls around. I would say that AC7 can release anytime between mid-2016 and late 2017, but obviously we can't say anything for sure on this front. Remember that this is all guesstimation based on the assumption that AC7 is real and being revealed at PSX. I could be completely wrong on every single thing I just said. I could have hit the nail straight on the head every time. AC7 may never exist. But while I'm waiting for my girlfriend to arrive in NYC, this was a fun thing to write up, and all of these thoughts have been swimming in my head over the past few days ever since we got the news that AC7 exists from the dataminers.

Plus, December 6 is my birthday. For the sake of << one hell of a birthday present >>, I hope this is real. For the sake of the series, I hope this is real.