Final Fantasy IX Remake Reportedly in Development

Square Enix's calendar for the rest of the year has started to fill out with Final Fantasy 16 shipping later this month and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth set to launch sometime this fall; however, the team is seemingly still hard at work on a few other projects. Originally mentioned last year, rumors have been swirling once again that Square is working on a Final Fantasy 9 remake. On top of that, the recent rumor also speaks to the potential scope of this remake, though keep in mind that every rumor should be taken with a grain of salt and plans often change during development.

The latest churn of the rumor mill comes from Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb who said on his Game Mess Mornings podcast that he heard "Final Fantasy 9 remake is real, that it is real and happening." Grubb would go on to say that the remake would sit "somewhere between The Crisis Core and Final Fantasy 7" Remake in terms of scope, meaning that we probably won't have a trilogy of games that subvert the original story if this remake does happen.

What adds a bit more credence to Grubb's rumor is that the Final Fantasy 9 remake was part of the Nvidia GeForce Now leak that came out last year. Alongside FF9, were games that have since come out or been announced including Helldivers 2, Returnal, Dragon's Dogma 2, and countless others. Again, any leak should be taken with a hearty degree of skepticism, but the Nvidia leak has turned out to be a relatively solid indicator of games headed to PC.

Even if the rumors turn out to not be true, it's an exciting time for Final Fantasy fans. We are just a few days away from stepping into the shoes of Clive and seeing what Final Fantasy 16 has to offer. That game ships on June 22 exclusively for the PlayStation 5. Later this year, we'll also get to dig into Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the sequel to the 2020 reimaging of that classic game. Rebirth doesn't have a firm release date just yet, but we may start to hear more about it during the upcoming summer events, especially with the team's Twitter account posting daily developer comments over the past week.