Why is Fatal Frame called Project Zero?

One game, three titles, and each one is a clue to a different stage of its life. During development at Tecmo, the project ran under the codename Project Zero, and it was first announced in July 2001 under that provisional title.

For the Japanese release, the codename was cut down to the title the team actually wanted: Zero. The game's Japanese release record gives the reasoning. Zero named the enemies, beings of nothingness, and it named the state of a person at a decisive moment, at their utmost. The written character carries a second reading too: it can be read as ghost. No English title on the shelf holds all of that at once.

Europe kept the working title. The French publisher Wanadoo, which had followed the game since its Japanese release and handled its translation and promotion, published it in August 2002 as Project Zero, and every European sequel kept the name, numbered: Project Zero II, Project Zero 3, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water.

North America renamed it. Tecmo published the game there in 2002 as Fatal Frame, a title taken from the games' own vocabulary, the split second shot at a ghost's attack, and added the marketing line the Japanese release never carried: Based on a true story. The names even crossed back over: when the expanded Xbox edition reached Japan in 2003, it used the American title instead of the Japanese one.