I mean srsly why isn't a lot of Vocaloid being released? Well the Miku Formula mostly but I want to know why.
I mean srsly why isn't a lot of Vocaloid being released? Well the Miku Formula mostly but I want to know why.
Yes I know, but I was asking (in general) why it is even a thing.
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Its not.... If anything "Forumlas for success" actually speed things up and this case it would only apply to the design. It would have 0 effect on the library.
Okay to solve this problem, you have 3 little letters that will explain everything; XSY. Lets take a look at Ah software. They've actually produced the most vocals in this era then previous ones all together. As ell as re-releasing all vocal in a newer engine, they've added new vocal for Yukari, Kiyoteru and Iroha, thats 4 new vocals we never had before. not only that, but some were overhauled for improvements. I'm sure miki and Yuki would have had new vocals too if it was possible. nd even then, Ah software are currently aiding with Macne Nana Plus and have 2 VOICEROID vocals which jut got funding for raised (though the event for the raiser of the second end on the 18th). And Ah software are looking at English versions of their characters; which take a year to a year and a half to produce at times.
The Japanese companies are producing extra vocals, even internet co, which slows things down. To be fair the difference between V3 and V4 are minor, and are summed up with; GWL and XSY. The engine has tweaks and all that, but the basics are the same for the vocals, in fact Interent co ltd aside vocals are almost identical in build. A few tweaks to English vocals to improve them occurred, but the standard Japanese build is identical. Proof of the pudding is that Gackpoid V3 and V4 are practically the same thing 3 vocals and Rana V3 and V4 are the same, except Rana V4 has GWL.
So why are there less vocaloids coming along? Well... To be fair a lot of the issue actually lies in how the engine was launched. it was released without warning or flashing lights, so vocals were ready when they were instead of ready for launch. This was due to the project leader (whose name I can't spell) retired and he wanted the new version out before his net birthday in Jan 2016. In fact, VY1v4 was the only launch title Vocal, and she was followed by Cyber Diva for english. some studios like PowerFX basically re-did their V3 late engine vocals see Ruby.
To top it off, Yamaha had a lot of "Yamaha" vocals in early V3, which is not so many in V4. These were released quickly on session within few months, but by Jan... We had only really IA coming along who was new. So much of the buzz was gone by Jan and to be honest... By the end of V3 were had only half a dozen new vocals to look forward to.
So between XSY slowing things down, overall less "Yamaha" vocals and sudden release of the V4 engine, things are sluggish. Mostly the big difference this generation has been to the Vocaloid net service, which has just jumped into English, and effort has been put into making the Mobile VOCALOID Editor a viable option compared to iVocaloid and VocaloWitter.
In this case, Miiu has 0 to do with things.
Take note, the issue with V3 was that there was o any vocals released that they bit into each others sales. Too much of a good thing is bad, if you have a produce who can afford 1 new vocal at a time and he or she is presented with 5 new ones at once, think what is going to happen here. 4 vocal, or all 5 if the producer decides to wait longer for a better product, will loose out. Over saturation of a market can be just as bad as not enough on the market. See the raise and fall of the franchise "Guitar Heroes" and "Rock Band", both of which between them killed their own market by producing too much too soon. Guitar Heroes especially was guilty of its own demise as it was producing products far too often. Consumers aren't made of money.
@Angel Emfrbl I thought AHS was only going to make English vocals as new Vocaloids instead of with their pre-existing Vocaloids? Except for Nana, but she wasn't originally AHS (I'm hoping they'll give her voicebanks for XSY because she probably won't survive V4 without any)
By the way I personally don't want a lot of new vocals for the V4 generation, other than VY4, the rest of the Macne family, and maybe a finished Ausgris but that's it. All an overload of Vocaloid releases is going to do is cause the same "every new Vocaloid sounds alike" phenomenon as in V3 again. That's pretty much the only reason why later releases in V3 weren't that popular, like Kokone and AnoKano, even though they're female vocals and that's what the Japanese market prefers, at the time there were just too many of them. I don't get why people complain about updates, in my opinion it's a good thing because it gets vocals to the latest engine. There are plenty of vocals like the V1 and V2 Engloids that could really use updates. There's nothing wrong with new vocals but sometimes we get ones that are kind of useless like Arsloid and Unity-chan, and ones that don't add anything new like Merli and Chika.
@Scintillarescenza, nope, the avatar will be ept but the voicer changed. nana aside none of their provider's know English enough to do it, so they said they'd find British and American natives of a similar type.
Most of the releases this gen are updated of existing vocals... But yes, on top of the vocals being more in V3 there were an awful lot of vocals that didn't stand out or overlapped. In early V3 people began to really get snappy about people saying one vocal sounded similar to another, but honestly... I point out this is crap, as if its possible in real life its possible in Vocaloid. You only have X amount of vocal variants within the human vocal before tone and range become similar and some professionals are trained to imitate a style (example, opera singers). Sure the samples are different between Vocaloids that that impacts how a vocal sounds, preventing them being identical, but they can sound alike.
...And yes, lets not get into the female vocaloids domination of the Japanese market thing. Because it kinda got remarks on non-Japanese vocals like Maika, who shouldn't have been receiving comment since she was the 3rd of a new language... The fans did a lot ore whining in V3 then in V2.
@Angel Emfrbl The avatar will be kept but the voice provider changed? That's kind of interesting, because even though it's represented by the same character it's a different voice but it's still the same Vocaloid. I guess that would only work for character based vocals like AHS's, probably not for say, Gackpo or Sachiko.
I honestly don't mind if two vocals sound similar, as long as they have some unique vocal traits to distinguish them from others. But Chika and Merli sound way too generic, Unity-chan sounds like Rana, and AnoKano had some potential but were low quality and didn't have lower pitches. There are quite a few female Japanese vocals that sound alike in that way, but people shouldn't complain about vocals from other languages having those voice types. A lot of people whined about Ruby or Cyber Diva being high-pitched and nasal when they're the first Engloids to have both of those traits (Prima is high-pitched but mature sounding, and Sonika isn't nasal). They also said that Stardust sounds too generic just like all the other Chinese vocals and that Yanhe is the exception when Yanhe only sounds like that because she was voice acted like Len...Anyway it was solely an issue with Japanese V3s and not any other language, and it's pretty irrelevant in V4 so I don't know why people bring it up today.
Scintillarescenza wrote: @Angel Emfrbl The avatar will be kept but the voice provider changed? That's kind of interesting, because even though it's represented by the same character it's a different voice but it's still the same Vocaloid. I guess that would only work for character based vocals like AHS's, probably not for say, Gackpo or Sachiko.
Its like dubbing an anime... Lol.
Angel Emfrbl wrote: Its like dubbing an anime... Lol.
I know but it's different because Vocaloid is more about the voice (and a lot of anime dubs don't sound like the original which is why I don't watch them, except some that are better than the original, but that's rare)
Scintillarescenza wrote:
Angel Emfrbl wrote: Its like dubbing an anime... Lol.
I know but it's different because Vocaloid is more about the voice (and a lot of anime dubs don't sound like the original which is why I don't watch them, except some that are better than the original, but that's rare)
Samurai Pizza Cats... Even the creators went "I wish we'd done it like that". I likened it to dubbing because its taking the property and using all the same assets with a different voicer. One of my favourite shows Flint the Time Detective received a horrible dub. Worst character was "Merlock". For example, in the episode where Change is introduced, Merlock mentions he is wealthy in the original. In the English dub instead of being rich, they wrote him as poor. AND THATS THE TIP OF ThE ICEBERG. When Deathdas/Uglinator activated Merlock's true power it was mentioned this was possible because he was descended from Vampires in the original, in the dub, it was put down to the Time Shifter's power to turn things into monsters.... Though Deathdas didn't truly control everyone; their actions and emotions felt while under his influence were their own doing. Unless he decided to control you directly. But this same power is how he controlled Good Time Shifters. :-/
But this is all off topic.