Bandai Namco and Project Aces will take down official websites for Ace Combat games that used Flash on December 25, 2020. However, they will also preserve most content from those websites by uploading videos on the series’ YouTube channel. This announcement was made through the series’ Japanese official Twitter account.
Flash used to be a popular platform to create websites worldwide, including in Japan. It was utilized for official websites for many Japanese video games released around the mid-to-late 2000s. However, the platform has now been mostly abandoned in favor of HTML5. There will be no more official support for Flash starting in 2021.
Here’s the list of titles in the series that used Flash for their official websites, and thus will be affected by the support terminating:
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, released for PlayStation 2 in 2004
- Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, released for PlayStation 2 in 2006
- Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, released for Xbox 360 in 2007
- Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, released for PlayStation Portable in 2006
- Ace Combat: Joint Assault, released for PlayStation Portable in 2010
Bandai Namco and Project Aces will take down the official websites for the aforementioned titles on December 25, 2020, at 5pm JST (3 AM ET). Downloadable content found at the websites, such as wallpapers, will no longer be available after they are closed. But at the same time, Project Aces will also preserve content from the Flash websites by recording videos and uploading them to the series’ official channel on YouTube.
Project Aces celebrated the 25th anniversary of the series in 2020. It’s first game was released on PlayStation in 1995. The latest title, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, is immediately available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC worldwide. It also recently added popular fictional aircraft from previous titles as DLC.
