Whether this means he's actually doing more than a theme song or not, I have no idea:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174580

"A big news from E3! The release of FINAL FANTASY XIV was annouced, and all the music will be written by Nobuo Uematsu!"

Source: http://dogearrecords.blog92.fc2.com/

At this point, I wouldn't consider that blog an authoritative source.

... aha. Why?

Because it's widely known that Uematsu has gone senile, of course.

WTF? Uematsu has gone senile? That's news to me. Besides, Dog Ear Records blog isn't written by Uematsu himself. It's written by Dog Ear Records staff, usually wappa or sekky. The info they provide is quite accurate. If they say "all the music will be written by Nobuo Uematsu" that likely means that's indeed the current plan. Also, Original Sound Version have got the same info from "a reliable source at Square Enix".

Agreed. Such an announcement is not made "for fun", I am sure they had to get permission from Square Enix before publishing it.

EDIT: I think they updated their website. It now says:

"A big news from E3! The release of FINAL FANTASY XIV was annouced!
And ALL the music of FF14 will be written by Nobuo Uematsu!
As I recall, 10 years have passed since he wrote all the music for the FINAL FANTASY 9."

Is it wrong of me to say "really, who cares?"  His work showed a sharp decline after FF6 and the new composers (Hitoshi Sakimoto, Masashi Hamauzu, Junya Nakano, Naoshi Mizuta) have shown that they can hold their own in the big-leagues.  I was absolutely elated to hear that Masashi Hamauzu was doing the soundtrack for XIII.  He seems like the logical successor to Uematsu's legacy.  (Not that Hitoshi Sakimoto didn't do a brilliant job with XII).

Funny they didn't fix the Engrish.

Before:

After:

No, not really. I could care less about the game itself (I think it's kinda silly to announce XIV when XIII isn't even out yet) and the series anymore.

Considering how long Nobuo has gone without composing all the music for a FF however, I guess it's alright - he seriously needed to get away from FF for a while and he's pretty much done that in recent years.

Pretty much most casual gamers do.

Not that I hate him - but when it comes down to a numbered FF soundtrack, I think acessibility and memorability matter the most and creativity or whatever is of secondary importance. I don't think Hamauzu can cater for as many people as even current Uematsu. But yeah, that's exactly what FFXIII is going to prove... Let's wait (I wouldn't be surprized if he proves himself again, considering how good the samples are so far).

I personally think Tanioka's natural and unpretentious style is much closer to why Square's sound team attracted so many fans in their golden era than anything else the current sound team can offer, and I'd love her to join in XIV, but perhaps she might have been already peaked (Ring of Fates is IMO as bad as Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, Promthia and Aht Urhgan, of all the FF scores.).

I think Cedille is right (apart from the negative remarks about Ring of Fates and Dirge of Cerberus). I love the fact that Hamauzu is a "real" musician, but he probably won't ever have the accessibility of Uematsu. Besides I think Uematsu would do a much more solid job than anyone on the current sound team anyway, especially since Mizuta and Tanioka seem tired from all their samey scores. I just hope he uses better arrangers and synthesizer operators than those of Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon.

Lord of Vermilion is AWESOME, and it's also another Uematsu/Square Enix project. Lost Odyssey was very good also. Now, the trailer music didn't sound very good, but I'm keeping my hopes up that the actual game might have a different intro piece (more akin to FF11's).

As for Hamauzu, his stuff in FF13 hasn't sounded very good at all so far. Of course I will give the full soundtrack the benefit of the doubt, but it's possible FF13 will exhaust Hamauzu like FF12 did with Sakimoto.

You're funny!  

Sakimoto continues to be brilliant as shown by the excellent Valkyria Chronicles and Riz-Zoawd OST's.  We can't say anything for certain right now regarding XIII's soundtrack, but from what I've heard, he's brought out his A-game.  Of course, I'm an unabashed Masashi Hamauzu fanatic

If Noby will make FF14 sound anything like Lord of Vermillion, that'd be killer.

I agree on Lord of Vermilion.  That soundtrack is amazing and by far the best Uematsu work in many, many years.  I got the same general feeling listening to LoV OST the first time as I did when I heard the Soukaigi OST the first time (which is a very, very good thing).
I also agree that what I've heard of Hamauzu from FFXIII has not impressed.  I find Hamauzu to be inconsistent.  I have no interest in his Dirge work or his Musashi work.  The Unlimited Saga OST is near and dear to me though.  I guess that game had to have something going for it...

As for Sakimoto, again inconsistent with my feelings for him.  BoFV and Legaia 2 are awesome.  VS is very good.  FFT/FFTA are ok.  FF12 and Riz-Zoawd... not awful, but overall no thank you! 

Nakano... His written perhaps 4 of 5 songs over his entire career I care anything for.  All of them come from Dewprism.

As far as Final Fantasy is concerned, long live Uematsu, Tanioka, and Mizuta.  The news of Uematsu handling FFXIV pleases me.

Oh, and for the person that said Ring of Fates OST was bad, I agree it was bland, but Echoes of Time OST was MUCH improved.

You folks have gotten me interested in checking out Lord of Vermilion now.  What sort of musical style does Uematsu implement in that one?

And I still always think of "Sword of Vermilion" every time I see the name.

QFT (Though probably pretty unlikely.)

Here's hoping at least some of the great arrangement and performance of LoV does make it into FFXIV, however.

It's sweet, sweet, metal. I'd recommend listening to it immediately. It's only fault is an over-reliance on the main theme, but I think it's otherwise some of his best stuff since before he left Square.

Yeah, the over-reliance on the main theme is also the only fault I had with it.  I won't lie, that aspect is somewhat annoying.  But the material itself is so good I can actually overlook it.

Gritty, generic hard rock, with a few meaningfully melodic exceptions that brought back memories of vintage Uematsu.

Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and Lord of Vermilion all ranged from mediocre to dreadful as far as I'm concerned.  (Lost Odyssey starts promising but can't keep it up through the second disc.)  I'll admit that I've listened through each only once so far but they were so bland and uninspiring from the beginning that I couldn't convince myself to waste any more time on them.

Whatever magic touch Uematsu had, he's lost it in increasing degrees since FF7, and now often seems resorted to trying to mimic his own previous work.  I'm hopeful but skeptical that FFXIV will surprise me, and I may even listen to his recent OSTs again sometime when I have absolutely nothing better to do, but I find it impossible to care about whatever new projects he's announced for when there are so many other composers with more reputable recent output.

So, we can chalk this up to being "thematically-consistent", then? :) 

I sure hope it's a likeable main theme, at least.

Haven't heard those. I was only talking about FF12. And I hear Sakimoto's Opoona soundtrack is very good.

My scepticism is specifically towards how Hamauzu will handle a presumably 4-disc score of FF13's scope, something he has never done before on his own, on any game. Even if it turns out bad, it will not make Sigma Harmonics or Dirge of Cerberus any worse, and likely Hamauzu would rebound soon. But to put it shortly, I don't think Hamauzu by himself could be Uematsu's successor, when I even don't believe he can handle a single 4-disc score without strain.

Any 4-disc OST is bound to have a few filler tracks here and there.  SaGa Frontier II was 3 discs of pure brilliance, I don't see why adding a fourth would make that much of a difference.  Granted DoC:FFVII was his low point, but he shouldn't have been given that one anyways.   It would have been much better for Junya Nakano IMO.

Couldn't give a shit about the actual game, since it's going to be another MMO (why make some of the numbered installments of the series MMOs? Why can't they just call it Final Fantasy Online, and Final Fantasy Online II?) It's like they're trying to trick us into getting an MMO all over again.

Soundtrack might actually be decent.

Blue Dragon was decent to typical, as was Lost Odyssey. Anata wo Yurusunai was original and inspired. Lord of Vermillion is a load of WIN. And I liked FFVII ~ X, what Uematsu composed.

I like Hamauzu even better than Uematsu. SaGa Frontier II was total fuckign epic WIN, Samurai Legend Musashi was total fuckign chill, melodic WIN, and Dirge of Cerberus grew on me the more I listened to it. Oh yeah, Sigma Harmonics was also TOTAL FUCKIGN EPIC PWNAGE. FFXIII's soundtrack should be a nice 4-discs of AWEXOME. Hamauzu might have not done a project of this magnitude in awhile, but I'm confident he won't disappoint.

lol Bernhardt, I had to quote you for my sig. 

I actually like Lost Odyssey (to a certain extent. It does have some filler, a late Uematsu weakness) but I agree with you that Blue Dragon is mediocre. I couldn't make it past the first track of Lord of Vermilion.

Nice, didn't even know the DER blog mentioned Uematsu would be doing all the music.

If you're not convinced, there's another source.  Patrick Gann talked to a staff member from the FFXIV team who confirmed one again that Uematsu is scoring the entire game:

http://www.originalsoundversion.com/?p=3122

I still think it's likely to change over time.  Especially with updates.  But as it stands right now, he's the only composer working on the title.

I'm curious as to which tracks you're refering to on Dew Prism. I'm not a big fan of Nakano/Dew Prism either, but there are a handful of tunes I do like from it. Same goes for his work on FFX.

<3 Blue Dragon OST.

<3 Sakimoto.

<3 Hamauzu.

<3 Nakano.

Hell, I'll even throw in a <3 Uematsu at this point.

Yeah, I read that on IGN as well.  It's confirmed.

FFXVI Q & A Session with team
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/991/991483p1.html

"Uematsu only did a few tracks in FFXI, how much is he doing for XIV?"

"Square Enix revealed to IGN that Uematsu will be doing ALL the music for Final Fantasy XIV and that it will be composed in a range of different styles and genres."

I hope he'll be granted some help with arrangement and perhaps some live instrumentation this time.

I don't think Uematsu is in particular need of help arrangeing, and Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey featured plenty of live instrumentation, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Yeah, that's why I've been concerned even since hearing their Qs and As. If FFXIV successfully becomes a long-running game like FFXI, they will release some expansions - but will Uematsu still remains a solo composer? If not, why doesn't he hire another composer from the beginning? No more Mizuta, though.

Uematsu literally always needs helps when he score a game on post-SNES consoles, because he just makes sketchy MIDI sequence data (the recent issue of DTM magazine reveals he only uses piano/electronic piano patches and avoids anything else because he thinks it would narrow down the potential of the sketched track) and it's Kawamori, or Narita who arranges it. Or Nakayama, Hamaguchi and Toyama when orchestrated. I don't think it's an uncommon story as, regardless of whether it's true or not, I've sometimes heard that some of the equally eminent composers like Yoko Kanno or Hollywood film guys are merely responsible for submitting chord progressions but eventually get the credits and acclaims for everything other people do.

The working style of Uematsu holds both strength and weakness, methinks. Without talents like Shiro Hamaguchi or Masashi Hamauzu (who assisted in chorus performance of FF VIII and XI, not to mention his own singing in VII), it can result in just a waste of the budget. For instance, although I know not a few people like it, I think "Releasing Seal" from Blue Dragon could have been a masterpiece instead of being garbage as it is now, with a better performance and lyric (Hamauzu, how about saving "The Unsung War" - the track I also think suffers from the terrible chorus performance?).

In short, I do think Uematsu needs a better help.

<3 Zane

I wonder if FF14 will really be 100% Uematsu by the time the game ships. It seems that lot of games lately have been slipping in extra composers during development. FF12 had other composers supplementing Sakimoto's work. Actually, pretty much anything that is said to be composed by Sakimoto these days is really worked on by Basiscape as a whole. I've heard that Chrono Trigger was supposed to be Mitsuda's solo work, but Uematsu had to help out with extra music. Also, when it comes time for FF14 to have expansions, you can bet that Uematsu won't be doing all of those.