Apparently some people are convinced this is a real thing that will be announced any minute now to celebrate the game’s 25th anniversary. I looked into it and there seem to have been some accidental leaks in the past from Nvidia and the Epic Game Store that have suggested some kind of FF9 project is in the works. Some Industry Insiders™ have also “confirmed” that it exists. There’s also some sort of cartoon set in FF9’s world supposedly being made.
A lot of the things people have touted as evidence of Square Enix working on a remake recently seem to be just tweets or merchandise announcements simply related to the 25th anniversary though.
I haven’t really cared about whatever they’ve been doing with FF7 but I’d be curious to see how they’d handle a FF9 remake. I’m kinda dubious about SE being willing to invest the time and money for a full modern remake though. FF7’s popularity dwarfs 9’s and it still wasn’t enough to make Rebirth sell to SE’s stupidly high expectations. Didn’t FFXVI underperform too?
You might be right people want a 1:1 remake. I think you’re wrong that it has any merit as to why they should do it. At least how it is now people can play both versions and get something different out of them and the people aren’t pretending the original doesn’t exist like they might with other games. The remake is treated as the separate experience that it truly is than something that’s supposed to overwrite the original.
I totally understand that, honestly, but the reality is that people were awaiting a 1:1 specifically for decades. No one had ever talked about wanting a different version of FF7. That alone is the reason to make it, that would’ve given them a huge profit victory from the game alone not to mention merch.