Talk:Hatsune Miku/@comment-35502347-20190303040306/@comment-53539-20190306111643

I maintain Luka is far more overrated then Miku. With Miku, people accept she has weaknesses and even she has hate. With Luka, people are blind. She is the only Vocaloid from CFM people panicked over when she disappeared from the rankings of sales. And after a massive argument of how useful or good her V4x was, including EVEC and English, I have only had this confirmed even more. Luka can do no wrong in her fans eyes, yet even Kagamine fans can accept Act1 and Act2 were bad. Thats the difference here between her and the other CFM Vocaloids.

Piko's pretty much dead so no amount of fan pleading will bring him back unless they surprise the fans. I do note though, yeah... Miku is super popular to the point of stupidity. Piko is barely acknowledge and back in his first year of realise he was hit really badly with issues on just that. Some of it was trends within Vocaloid, some of it was bad luck (like releasing alongside the Kagamine Append and V2's end), others were Sony's fault. Most... Sony's fault, they ticked off a lot of potential producers by giving the only 5 day trial, removing songs before release uploaded with said trial and generally making it awkward for potential fans and producers who wanted him. Not to mention being the first Vocaloid to only be downloadable with originally no physical copy at a time that was the main way people bought Vocaloids (not much choice now, as many are only sold as DL). Being male Vocaloid alone was enough.

I remember the VO thread and mostly the interest was only seeing if miki and he worked well together (they struggle it turns out to harmonise). There was little interest and the first 2 years are a Vocaloids most important years after a release. A lot of the damage though as to just do with the V3 era. Within months of VY2 being released it was known that that was it, V2 was over and here comes V3. And that killed interest in a lot of the late newcomers. There was a dozen Vocaloids either released or confirmed by the middle of the year and the issue with late engine Vocaloid remains to this day. Vocaloids released in that engines last year generally have far less interest then a Vocaloid engines first year, as many producers use new Vocaloids as a stepping stone into a new engine. Though this is less popular now then it used to be due to the constant compatibility with older engines. So for Piko, if Sony didn't kill him off with the demo, V3 did.

The design was considered "ugly" at the time for its greys and dead eyes and was accused of ripping off miki or the CFM Vocaloids. The name was even criticised as it means "sound of Piko" and was kinda a rip of the CV series. The voice was okay, it stood out, but he was competing with Len Append and the VY2 vocal, both of which were HQ vocals versus his MQ. And vY2 in particular, was the best Japanese male of V2.

Miku was able to compete because of he voicebank was easy to use. Her Append didn't do so well. But Piko basically was doomed. I know recently his become more acknowledge but its purely because he is the only Japanese Vocaloid not with us anymore. In the meantime, we have Fukase, Arsloid, Yohioloid and Yuu who can replace him. As sad as it is, I honestly don't want Sony to produce another Vocaloid. They were a PR nightmare beaten only by SBS Artech who sold SeeU as a vocaloid capable of English without a English voicebank. But either way the main issue is everyone is at least 8 years too late to spark interest in Piko at this point.