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?
Last I heard, there was a mod team that developed an absolutely gorgeous-looking tech demo of IX, and SquareEnix was receptive, but unwilling to commit the resources needed to adapt a full remake. Now there’s a new song recording that seems to indicate some sort of movement, and the Nvidia thing, but I’ll believe it when I see it while staying cautiously optimistic.