CyberWolfBia
I talk more about games than I play them
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- She/Her
Hey so.. I got to a little back and forward with someone on Twitter about the ownership of the Fatal Frame IP (it all started because of Dragalia Lost, believe it or not lol); And it's weird that we have this misconception that Nintendo co-owns the IP with Koei Tecmo, when it's pretty much the Bayonetta situation (a SEGA IP), whereas Nintendo has control over the games they funded and published, and only that.. including Fatal Frame 5, which was recently rereleased as a multiplat (and Nintendo just opted to omit their copyright on the other platforms, while retaining in the Switch version);
I was looking further to see where this all originated, and all I could find was big sites linking Dusk Golem's blog as a source back in 2012, where they claim Nintendo has registered co-ownership of the IP; But at that time, Fatal Frame 2 Remake was released on the Wii, and the back cover, the copyright line clearly states that Project Zero is a Koei Tecmo brand, while the game is both Nintendo's and Tecmo's.
I also verified the NA's copyright for the Fatal Frame name and that was always registered under Tecmo Koei, with no history of changing hands at any point (unless I'm reading it wrong); And just recently, after the re-release of FF5, Koei renewed the Project Zero name themselves in Japan.. no hand of Nintendo on that one neither.
So either I'm missing some official source that stated that back in the day, or is just what people assumed when Nintendo started funding the Fatal Frame titles back on the Wii. Sure, the future of the series is still pretty much tied to Nintendo to an extend (if they decide to inject money on another game or not; since Tecmo themselves seems very uninterested), but the IP always were Tecmo's responsibility.
In fact, the PS2 games were rereleased on the PS3 PSN just after Nintendo started funding new projects; So I don't know why there's this idea floating around to this day.
I was looking further to see where this all originated, and all I could find was big sites linking Dusk Golem's blog as a source back in 2012, where they claim Nintendo has registered co-ownership of the IP; But at that time, Fatal Frame 2 Remake was released on the Wii, and the back cover, the copyright line clearly states that Project Zero is a Koei Tecmo brand, while the game is both Nintendo's and Tecmo's.
I also verified the NA's copyright for the Fatal Frame name and that was always registered under Tecmo Koei, with no history of changing hands at any point (unless I'm reading it wrong); And just recently, after the re-release of FF5, Koei renewed the Project Zero name themselves in Japan.. no hand of Nintendo on that one neither.
So either I'm missing some official source that stated that back in the day, or is just what people assumed when Nintendo started funding the Fatal Frame titles back on the Wii. Sure, the future of the series is still pretty much tied to Nintendo to an extend (if they decide to inject money on another game or not; since Tecmo themselves seems very uninterested), but the IP always were Tecmo's responsibility.
In fact, the PS2 games were rereleased on the PS3 PSN just after Nintendo started funding new projects; So I don't know why there's this idea floating around to this day.