the japanese numbers on VGchartz are wrong and you forgot to include FT4

it probably has sold over a million now. The Deception Series was a commecial failure but that hasnt stopped KoeiTecmo from making a new game in 2014 and localizing it digitally and physicley and making an expansion this year. KoeiTecmo games are nothing but commercial smaller titles.

Just because it sells less doesnt stop them from devoloping because those games never had a high budget

The impact of the 'censorship' is often overstated. I can't imagine many rationally minded folks letting something like that determine their purchase.

"Oh no, the game doesn't let me oogle a 17 year old in lingerie! OMG, boycott!"

On one side, nintendo have exclusive rigths over FF is more of a rumor, never officially confirmed. Besides, about censorship, actually, it didn't needed before because before nintendo, they didn't really made sexual outfit for the protagonits. Its something that only started to appear on the franchise in the ff2 remake, i think, that was exclusive for wii.

On the other side, being exclusive to nitenndo platafform actually hurt the chances of the franchises to expanding. C'mom guys, its not like nintendo wiiu owners are getting survival horror games in droves (like zombiu proved), except for the letter(lol). Resident evil, dead space, all horror franchises that strugled to sell on nintendo console when were exclusives to it. Maybe there is a market there, but not as big as the ones in the other platafforms.

In the end, i'm not really sure of the point that op is trying to make. Like, tecmo is still making games for it, and at each iteration, the game gos out of japan more and more. You are getting more games. It really that much important if its in the top of sales chart for you?

I have got Maidne but still haven't played it!

Personally, I think Nintendo should be more invested into the series. They should have done a physical release for the 5th game in North America and packaged it with the 4th game that we never got. I think if Nintendo were to invest in any mature series, Fatal Frame would be good since it very much is something Nintendo would make if they were to make an M rated game.

However, the claims that Nintendo killed the series are bogus. First of all, the series may have started when Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Clock Tower were at the top of their game but that was just a coincidence. Sales for the series have always been terrible. There have never been big marketing campaigns. The fact that we even saw three games in the series prior to Nintendo's takeover is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that Nintendo got their hands on the series is surprising given that prior to the 4th game, the series had never appeared on a Nintendo console. That means that Sony or Microsoft or any of the other major players felt the series wasn't even worth their time.

It's kind of like Bayonetta 2. People were mad about it being exclusive to Wii U even though it wouldn't have existed. The difference is unlike Fatal Frame, Bayonetta actually had a market to work with, so getting a western release wasn't even a question.

There´s just one thing that the article´s author misses completely and that´s A LOT relevant about the way Tecmo handed the franchise in America: Fatal Frame never sold well here. No Fatal Frame game reached more than 100k sales, way below all the other horror franchises mentioned.
The main reason for not launching those games in the West is purely financial. This is a niche game that couldn´t find a reasonable fan base in the West to keep it financially viable for Tecmo or Nintendo, which actually saved the series from being completely lost after the 3rd game

Even for Japanese standards those numbers are pretty low. No single game ever reached 80k. Sales in the West probably had more depressing numbers.

Not launching the series in the West after the third game was simply a financial matter: the sales projection wouldn´t match the investiment required in their localizations

I bought Fatal frame 5 Limited edition so +1 sale from me and I've always ignored Fatal frame before.

AFAIK the main problem with Fatal Frame IV was, that the game had too many bugs. I played the fan translated version, which still had the bugs. For instance I managed to enter a room, which I couldn't leave anymore. (So I had to restart from my last save.) Also the ghost list couldn't be completed, and the final unlockable couldn't be unlocked.

The (believable) rumors at this time was that Nintendo doesn't want to release a game with so many bugs and that TECMO doesn't want to repair the bugs (unless they get more money).

I never played any of the games myself but it seems like another of those cases of games that are really popular in one platform that by greed and money hatting, these companies sell their soul to a platform that has nothing to do with the genre of games they are offering. Just like ROTR scenario (even though FF is not as popular).