Final Fantasy 9 remake 'no longer moving forward' according to development leaks

Final Fantasy VII Revelation launches in 2027 and will finally cap off what’s been one of the longest remakes in gaming history.

According to HowLongToBeat, the original version of Final Fantasy VII on the original PlayStation would take around 80 to 100 hours to complete, if you committed to all of the side content.

Somehow, Square Enix has extended that to 240 hours with the remakes so far, if you add up 100% completion times for Final Fantasy VII: Remake and Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. If Final Fantasy VII: Revelation is as long as Rebirth, that number will probably be bumped up to around 400 hours in total.

Think about that for a second. All of those hours committed to the seventh game, and yet, according to insiders, Square Enix has completely abandoned other Final Fantasy remakes, including Final Fantasy IX.

Alex Donaldson from RPGSite and Respec.net recently took to ResetEra claiming a remake of the ninth Final Fantasy game was indeed in development, but possibly no longer.

A Final Fantasy 9 remake was leaked years ago, but is no longer happening

This all stems back to a NVIDIA GeForce Now database leak back in 2021, which revealed a variety of unannounced games said to be coming in the future. Titles included: Kingdom Hearts IV, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Helldivers 2 and many more.

Plenty of games featured in the leak ended up being confirmed, but while Final Fantasy IX was amongst them, Donaldson believes development has halted, with no plans to pick it back up anytime soon.

“There was an FF9 remake,” he began, “and it was a single game, and it was very far along.” The remake would have apparently been one complete title rather than split up into individual parts like Final Fantasy VII’s remake.

Donaldson continued: “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.”

It’s bad news for anyone hoping for the remake, especially since Final Fantasy IX is a highly-popular game in the series. A remake feels like a no-brainer, especially after the success of the Final Fantasy VII remakes.

However, there is still a glimmer of hope. Donaldson believes work on the remake had already been started, and rather than be scrapped entirely, there’s every chance it could be picked up again at some point in the future.

With Final Fantasy VII: Revelation officially concluding the seventh game’s remake, it’d allow Square Enix to turn its attention to something of a smaller scale, and more remakes will definitely be on the cards.

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