Board Thread:Off-Topic Discussion/@comment-6433273-20171231161124/@comment-53539-20180313162820

CCyclone wrote: @Foureyeface I had no idea Misha was on VO and being a jerk...I just recall her being incredibly unprofessional on Twitter, and being all "Don't worry guys I'm holding Ruby hostage bc I'm blackmailing them w my voice since I provided it lol"

Like it was so toxic and unprofessional, and it definitely turned me off to her

Knowing she was that way if not worse on VO just solidifies my dislike for her. The funny thing is I've got a friend who's pretty good buds with her and is like "Yeeah...she's not the greatest" lol

rip ruby and her weird nasally pronunciation of every word ever People forever punish PowerFX for something that was Anders' miscommunication. HE didn't make it clear what Ruby was going to be. They thought they were getting a voicebank they could sell as they please and even though what would be the finished design was handed to them, Anders presented it only as a possible design. Ergo, when Bil didn't like it he was free to hire another artist to provide and alternative design aimed at EDM, because Anders didn't give the right impression of its significance.

In addition in the other direction, Anders presented to Syo 3 options to sell Ruby under and told him that there was a possibility that every option wouldn't get him what he wanted, and that PowerFX would be the only one that could allow for what he wanted. So even then with the disappointment, Syo and Misha knew there was a chance they wouldn't be allowed to get what they wanted.

In the end as I said here at the time once the original artists' work was rejected, the fans would have gone for anything presented to them so long as it was anime-esque designed and cute. And its true, as you can see via the reaction to some Vocaloids released even when their voicebank wasn't very good (Kagamine Act1 + Act2). There is nothing original about the artwork for Ruby that hasn't been done before in Vocaloid whereas the EDM Ruby had flame hair. :-?

In the end people got very stupid and the fan reaction remains the worst. I still like the "I'm going to Pocaloid her to punish PowerFX!" which didn't punish them, but rather Syo as he got a bonus for certain sales expectations and had she done well the ability to release more voicebanks.

The problem is Bil's retirement and PowerFX's pull out of Vocaloid were both contributed to the failure of Ruby when it wasn't the case also. Bil retired to do other things unrelated to PowerFX, as Sanderson had done so before him (he went into voice acting) because an opportunity came up that was better. Had he stayed though, we would have had more vocaloid as he was in the planning stage even with Ruby's disaster of getting the next vocaloid done. The new group who are running PowerFX last year hadn't yet decided, the problem being is that Vocaloid was a low-profit software and PowerFX never sold a lot of copies of it. The issue was that Soundstation/Soundation? (forget name) even when Bil was in PowerFX he mentioned to me via e-mail it was the most profitable asset the company had. So more and more investment was being put into this rather then anything else.

https://soundation.com/

In addition things like sound libraries and loops also bring in money too. So in the end it seems the new team just weighed in the options and went for the obvious choice. Zero-G on the other hand have seen Vocaloid become one of their best products and therefore they are still selling them. This despite they also get more profit from some of their other stuff. Zero-G hang onto Vocaloid long enough to see it become successful for them.

Ruby wasn't very good and I feel out of the 5 natives, PowerFX got the worst deal. Essentially Giuseppe, despite all things remarked she behaved "funny" compared to other Vocaloids before her and sold along side her.

As I said on VO forums, despite what people want to believe, the most sales for PowerFX still came from EDM producers as confirmed by Bil. Ergo, the fans reaction to Ruby though a PR nightmare didn't play much of a role in her sales figures. I know everyone wants to believe otherwise but the reality is... We're just not the main buyers of Vocaloids in many cases. To :-?

Misha also kept telling people to protest, essentially the worst part of this was the voice provider.

The reality is, PowerFX and Bil were really nice and essentially he was open to answer questions and now we've lost out best source for information.