Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-53539-20180209105421/@comment-53539-20180209195423

Unfortunately, interest in a product is often regarded as important only in the first year.

As with Miku, though she sold 60,000 units in her lifetime, she sold 40,000 in the first year. 500 units in Kaito's first year also left an impact. IT is considered a rarity an old product will suddenly gain interest which is why his later sales in 2008 were a strange event.

After everyone who is likely to buy something has bought it, you have no more customers so you have to keep producing things for consumers to buy. Same theory of making a new vocaloid versus updating an old one.

I will note in regards to PowerFX's Sound Station... Subscription services tend to have a lot of impact early on, but the constant flow of remaining subscribers keep such services in play so long as profit is greater then the cost of running it. This is why in recent years some companies like Adobe have turned to subscription services, a habit is consumers buy the software once and wait a few versions before buying another version. However, the subscription service they now offer for several products at a affordable monthly price, meaning that it results in people constantly buying the same product to use it each month.

There is one drawback to this style of software... Eventually consumers will pay more then they would have for buying it once and not. So it can be like you are using the software on a loan and without you knowing it you have paid a huge interest. If you would have bought a software for $100 once, yet the software goes subscription only, that's a possible $120 in a year if the price is set at $10 a month. So they make $20 more off of you this way, then if they had sold it as a single product. Plus if you stay subscribed the following year they make yet another $120, meaning you have now paid $240 off of the software, a profit of $140. The reality is most such software only gets a major update every 2-4 years, so regardless you will pay more for this type of software in the long run. The reality is if you had paid $100, you wouldn't have paid that extra $140 and would have had a software you have full control of. Whereas the subscription services only stay for 30 days.

Often they claim things like free updates... But... In 10 years you yourself would buy only three versions, paying $300 or something, but the subscription price results in $1,200 instead.

Either way, you can see how the profit can build for a company, and why its a growing trend among bigger companies. I often fear Vocaloid going like this...