Short answers, pulled from the story.
Masayoshi Soken is a Japanese video game composer who has worked for Square Enix since 1998. He is best known as the lead composer and sound director of Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XVI, and he won the Game Award for Best Score and Music in 2023 for his work on Final Fantasy XVI.
Masayoshi Soken was born on the 10th of January, 1975, in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. He and his family later moved to Tokyo, Japan, where he studied chemistry at the Tokyo University of Science.
Yes. Soken underwent chemotherapy for cancer treatment throughout most of 2020, keeping the illness hidden from most of the Final Fantasy XIV development team. He announced the diagnosis in May 2021 at the Final Fantasy XIV Digital Fan Festival, stating that the cancer was in remission.
The Primals is a rock band Soken formed with members of the Final Fantasy XIV sound team and translator Michael-Christopher Koji Fox. They perform at Final Fantasy XIV events such as Fan Festival and have released several albums, starting with Final Fantasy XIV: From Astral to Umbral.
Yes. In 2025, Soken collaborated with Tom Morello on a track called "Everything Burns", performed by Morello with the band Beartooth. The track was used in the Arcadion Heavyweight raid series in Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, after Morello learned of Soken's admiration for Rage Against the Machine from collaborator Jason Charles Miller.
Soken composed the main theme for Shadowbringers after Nobuo Uematsu's illness in 2018 prevented Uematsu from contributing as he had for every previous expansion. Shadowbringers was the first Final Fantasy XIV expansion written without Uematsu's direct involvement.