Talk:Utatane Piko/@comment-35502347-20190128002935/@comment-53539-20190129080342

Back in the V2 era Piko got released at a bad time. So there isn't much warrant to even see him updated, and even if he had been super popular thats not for sure he would have been. So for your friends obsession, Vocaloid starts and ends with V3 and V4, and the only way forward is literally to look at Piapro Studio. Though I'd wait until CFM releases their next updated voicebank, which may be a year or two.

Piko's main issues amount to the way Sony peeved off the producers, Piko had a 5 day trial, songs using his vocal pre-release were removed from Nico Video. This combined with being released next to a CFM release and the Kagamines, meaning his competing with Len, then the release of VY2 (aka the best male V2 vocal) came along... Then within weeks it became known that the V2 era was over and V3 was on its way more or less with VY2's release.... Well before the year was up, Piko was obsolete because of the V3 era. And the 1st year of a Vocaloids life is their most profitable with the exception being Kaito. That leads to the other issue of Piko just being a male vocal as even now there is a clear distinct male majority among Vocaloid producers.

Back then, however, it was 80% male majority, mean that his market fell to about 20% of all producers (being female) and since there was already Len out there were issues with the competition. While Len wasn't a true male vocal, the Kagamines were among the Big 8 and the 2nd/3rd (the position varied with Luka) most successful CFM release and 2/3 of the vocaloid producers who bought the package were after Rin. The result is that if anyone wanted a male vocal, he would be used over Piko anyway. If you look at recent releases Mirai and Sora and the lacklustre reaction... Well... This was almost the same reaction Piko had back in V2, with generally the attention being on VY2 who was just a better Vocaloid and male. And even VY2, seemed to struggle to sell, just because males have that issue.

In V2, most producers used Len for reasons I listed, Gackpo or Kaito. Hiyama, Ryuto, VY2 and Piko id struggle to get attention. This was true even for those using in Japan English vocals, with many just using Big Al for just abut every male role that was V2 related and English. The only thing I will note about Len, is of all the male vocals Ryuto and he are voiced by females and its well established their not considered "true" male vocals.

This was Piko's problems either way. A lot of the fans here in the west seemed to have come in the last few years and part of it is down to V2's retirement. "You don't know what you've got until you've lost it", pretty much applies here. There isn't much else you can say, mediocre response, okay-ish Vocaloid... To be honest even down to the avatar the character mostly got "meh" responses at VO as it was not that interesting compared to all the others and it had a bit of "oddness" to it. Plus it felt like they just copied Miki who was a generally better Vocaloid overall, to the point some wanted him and her to be a thing... Yeah... Their vocals don't naturally sound good together it turned out, the same thing happens to Gumi and Yohioloid, meaning you have to work to make the pairing sound good.

Its a major bummer to the obsessed fans... But its a simple case of "where were you in 2010/2011?" because thats when Piko actually needed the attention. 2018/2019 at this point is 8 years too late to make a major difference. Though I don't think Yamaha should have stopped support for V2, I do know that you can't maintain old tech forever as the cost is too much and the majority of V2 was replaced by then with V3 and V4s who as I mentioned just were better overall. So Piko got left behind, but honestly since 8 English Vocaloids are gone too with the V1 and V2 retirement, loosing 1 Japanese voicebank honestly is not a big deal.