Talk:Sachiko/@comment-36026096-20181001204503/@comment-53539-20181006104643

It is hard because we don't know how popular most Vocaloids have been. We have guesses and estimates. Miku has been the most successful of the Vocaloids and we've had only her V2 confirmed as selling over 60,000+ units by about 2010/1. 40,000+ in its first year. She had 3,000 pre-orders. We don't know much, except that in one year V3 got a bump in sales due to Miku V3 being released selling % of Vocaloid sales go up by 17.9%. In fact every time Miku gets a new version, Vocaloid gets sales increases that year. Thats how much we have come to rely on Miku. *le sigh*.

In the days of V1, the unit sales expectations per Vocal was 1,000 units. Kaito was a flop at over 500. Meiko sold 3,000+ in her first year (the first year is the most important as most sales come then in the majority of cases for all products). The Engloid trio met all expectations except in America. They were, however, not super popular.

Other then that the only indicate is how often Vocaloids update, and even then...

Bare in mind Tone Rion was a it of a shock in even Japan when she was updated as she wasn't one of the super popular ones, for her to receive an update though means she at least met expectations... Though bare in mind she was the first of a vocaloid group and the other members never showed. Nemi is considered an update that was done in the new V4 recording style. Nemi basically has more of her singers traits and is more realistic, reacting differently to Tone Rion. Rana V4 was the commercial sale version of her magazine vocal (which is known to have done well due to how well the magazine did). The VYs don't all do super well, but because they head products they are always being updated, though of the 4 VY1 seems to be the most popular due to how many versions it has. But you also can tell Gumi is the most popular Internet vocal because she stands at 2 updates, an English version and 10 voicebanks... As well as a talk for a different software.

But even then, the niche products like Sachiko here may not update not because their unpopular but because of other issues. Gackt for example spent 8 hours producing his Vocaloid Gackpo... But the reason we don't see English Gackpo (besides Gumi English possibly not doing well enough and dev time) is you need Gackt to take an entire week off for recording at least, possibly a month. Thats a lot of time to ask professional vocalists to take off. Though this is for English, even in Japanese it could be too much. 4 hours is half a day to some vocalists, but to others could be their entire days worth to that professional. And the price... And presuming they can be used for Vocaloid (Vocaloid doesn't work with all vocal types still), the problems can stack up. For a product that costs more to make, professional vocalist vocals aren't this common for a reason, plus the scare is still there of their vocaloid replacing the need of the vocalist completely, thus it could cost them their job.

So vocals like Sachiko are a treat to have, but expectations should not always be high that they did well, but should not ness. have to be high. They simply have to do well enough to meet expectations. If would be nice if they broke expectations, but its okay if they don't. Very few producers can use them as I noted more or less previously. Generally, music related software doesn't always earn a lot. Reminds me of the protest on Steam when they wanted to introduce a $300 charge to release a game on Steam, but some gamer devs reported $3000 was all they made in profit. $300 therefore is a lot to ask for as it to those game devs would eat a lot of their profit.