Actually, to a lot of people, FFIX was an extremely big deal. FFVIII made it look like Square had completely lost track of what it was supposed to be doing, and FFIX let us know that they realized we were concerned and wanted to let us know that they still care about their roots. It was basically a love letter to all the fans of the older games in the series. If FFIX had been another game like FFVIII, or even a game like FFX, Square would have lost a ton of fans.