Famous leaker Nate the Hate (who has a pretty solid track record) has been making waves for the past few days after supposedly revealing much of Nintendo’s big plans for 2026 and early 2027, but his latest podcast episode had one more interesting update worth examining – and it’s about the current status of the long-awaited Final Fantasy 9 remake.
This is one project we keep hearing about from time to time, yet Square Enix appears to be nowhere near ready to unveil it, or even confirm its existence. Recently, however, the greatly delayed FF9 animated series (which may be a follow-up to the game, of sorts) resumed production, but does that necessarily mean the publisher is looking at reviving the game it’ll try to honour?
Watch on YouTube
According to Nate (hat tip to PushSquare for the nugget of overlooked info), not really. At least not for now. “The last update I had on it is that the game is still on ice,” he briefly said. Like Push Square’s Stephen Tailby points out, “on ice” is very specific wording here, so no official cancellation might have happened. Sometimes, publishers are interested in certain games and willing to push them across the finish line, yet choose to relocate resources in order to prioritise more important projects.
Considering the success of the FF7 Remake trilogy (which is set to be finished soon-ish), we’d be shocked if Square Enix never went back to one of the most beloved Final Fantasy games, but the publisher admittedly has a lot on its plate right now. With some big veterans pointing out the wait times between new mainline entries have also gotten ridiculously long, another possible explanation is that executives are now looking to put more resources into such projects in order to captivate the younger generations versus an aging fanbase.
Rumours of a FF9 remake originated from the infamous Nvidia leak that happened earlier this decade. At the time of writing, the vast majority of the big games on that list have been released, announced, or confirmed to have been in development at some point, so it’s easy to see why everyone keeps paying attention to certain rumblings after all these years.