While rumors about a remake of seminal PS1-era RPG Final Fantasy 9 have died down for some time now, a new report indicates that it was well under development before work on it stalled. According to VG247’s Alex Donaldson, the remake was going to be a single game, unlike the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, and was also “very far along”. This detail comes down to how Square Enix executive Naoki Yoshida tends to discuss games in public.
“Yoshida has a strategy he deploys for managing fan expectation where he speculatively says things he knows to be true. For instance, during FF16’s promotion, he casually speculated about the possibility of more games and stories in that universe. At the time he did this, some was on the slate. But things change, obviously. What he is doing here is simply outlining that such things are not likely to happen and giving a broad reason for why, though the reason isn’t entirely true anyway, as it’s all a question of scope and scale.”
Donaldson’s post comes on the heels of Yoshida’s recent statement about potential remakes of Final Fantasy 6, 8 or 9 needing to be released in multiple instalments. When it comes to Final Fantasy 9’s rumored remake, Donaldson went on to explain that Yoshida’s statements are essentially a way for him to manage fan expectations.
“There was an FF9 remake, and it was a single game, and it was very far along. Yoshida even made some vague comments like these hinting at the fact around the last expansion’s FF9 tribute content. So, it is possible, with the right scope, which, to be clear, is obviously a smaller scope than FF7R. However, for various reasons – surely a story for another day – that project stalled out, and it’s no longer moving forward. And Yoshida makes comments like this to manage fan expectations.”
Ultimately, Donaldson believes that Square Enix wants to start working on brand-new mainline Final Fantasy games rather than only relying on past titles. This work, he said, will likely start after the company has wrapped up the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy.
“What this is really all about is that SE has made the decision that after they close out the 7R trilogy they need to focus on new stories and less on mining the past, which has done okay for them but ultimately offered diminishing returns. If you want to grow the franchise, remakes probably aren’t it.”
The last time we heard about Final Fantasy 9’s rumored remake was an insider noting earlier this year that there has been “no new movement” when it came to its development in recent times. The rumors first started all the way back in 2023 thanks to an infamous GeForce Now leak that, at the time, had indicated that God of War (2018) would be coming to PC, and Helldivers 2 was being developed. The same leaks had also indicated that Square Enix had been working on a remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics – which we saw last year with Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles – and a remake of Final Fantasy 9.
