Masayoshi Soken

is a Japanese video game composer who has worked for Square Enix since 1998. Soken is best known for being the lead composer and sound director of Final Fantasy XIV and its expansions and lead composer of Final Fantasy XVI.

Biography Soken was born on January 10, 1975, in Tokyo, Japan. He was exposed to music at a young age—his father was a professional trumpet player and his mother taught piano. At Konami, he worked on the arcade rail shooting game Evil Night. He joined Square in 1998 and his early work at the company primarily focused on sound effect design, rather than composition. Soken also arranged a few tracks from previous Mana games, and performed the electric guitar for his arrangements. In 2007, he scored the online game Elebest with Ai Yamashita. Soken's only composition in the game. He also participated in a Square Enix advertisement for pencils where he got beaten up by two robots; the commercial featured music composed by him. Soken created the fanfare for Square Enix Music TV, a monthly video feature where new album releases are discussed and interviews with Square Enix composers are conducted. and "Languid Afternoon" for the third volume in 2007; he went under the alias "Sorbonne Soken" on the third volume. In 2008, he composed the Japan-exclusive Nanashi no Game, this time under the pseudonym "Luis Noma". In 2010, he composed another sports game for the Wii, Mario Sports Mix.

Since the 2010 development team reshuffling, he has been sound director for Final Fantasy XIV. Soken became primary composer for the title with the launch of A Realm Reborn and the expansions that followed. He formed a rock band called The Primals, with members of the sound team and translator Michael-Christopher Koji Fox, to play at Final Fantasy XIV events such as Fan Festival. The Primals have since released several albums starting with Final Fantasy XIV: From Astral to Umbral. Soken was tasked with the composition. Shadowbringers was the first expansion in the Final Fantasy XIV series to be written without Uematsu's direct involvement. He has toured with The Primals across Japan, including shows at Makuhari Messe, Yokohama Arena, and Nippon Budokan. He performed with The Primals at Download Festival at Leicestershire, England in 2026.

In May 2021, during the Final Fantasy XIV Digital Fan Festival, Soken announced that he had been receiving chemotherapy for cancer treatment throughout most of 2020, adding that the cancer was in remission. Soken kept the treatment hidden from most of the development team, doing some of his work for Final Fantasy XIV from the hospital.

In September 2020, Square Enix announced that Final Fantasy XVI was in development for PlayStation 5. Though not detailed initially, in June 2022, further information was revealed, including that Soken would be the game's lead composer. For his work on Final Fantasy XVI, Soken and his team would be nominated and then win the Game Award for Best Score and Music in 2023.

Musical style and influences Soken primarily approaches his game composing with the player's experience in mind. When tasked with arranging Final Fantasy music originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu, he takes extra care to achieve this goal. Soken credits his experience as a sound designer, sound editor, and voice editor for helping him handle the pressure of the Final Fantasy XIV remake. In 2025, he was able to collaborate with Tom Morello, guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, on a track for Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. After hearing of Soken's admiration for Rage Against the Machine from frequent Final Fantasy XIV collaborator Jason Charles Miller, Morello wrote and performed the track, "Everything Burns", with the band Beartooth and it was used as part of the Arcadion Heavyweight raid series.

Works