English Hatsune Miku + Vocaloid Store Plans

[oftendistracted]

Those of you on Facebook, take heed - At the New York Comic Con, Crypton are trying to get an idea for the demand for Vocaloids in US territories, and have asked people on Facebook to go friend Miku's page on the proviso that if she gets 39,390 friends on it they'll go and give her an English-speaking release. They've also mentioned looking into

Comments

[stephieku]

A US Store where I can buy music sounds nice, even if there is already a nice selection on iTunes. I don't think an English bank for Miku is a good idea...more like Engrish Miku...

[puchikou_chan]

Miku concert in comic con was freakin packed ;^; i didn't even make it inside orz

Also don't know hopw i feel about this yet,...cept vocaloids are getting more and more popular each day

[itachinyu]

I dont even get why anyone had this idea to begin with. Miku cant speak english, so only people who know Japanese could use her 'properly' and I dont know how big that market would be in the US. If they wanted to give her an english voicebank, it would either be a hilarious engrish miku or...a different voice actor, which wouldn't be Miku, which would defeat the purpose of it to begin with

[darknightrain]

Also no one seems to be taking into account that; and I mean no offense to the overseas vocaloid fandom, a great deal of the people are 'kids', and people who would not shell out US $150 for a computer program (I mean, come on. I hate to be the pessimistic one but a huge percentage of this current generation cant even be bothered to pay US$10 for a volume of manga they say they're a huge fan of.) Of course, there will be people that -would- want to pay this much for Miku, or a vocaloid...I just dont really think it'd be enough for Crypton to make a profit out of. There's a bit of a big difference between being a vocaloid fan and being a vocaloid producer, and just because you're the first one, doesn't mean you are somehow gifted with the ability to be the second one. I love the hell out of Vocaloids, but $150+ is a LOT to pay for someone who is musically-retarded, can't compose and thus wouldnt get any use out of the software other than making miku talk to me now and then. [/sad person]My thoughts, exactly. Hell, there's even Vocaloid

[greatpromise]

>Will they get the 39,390 friendings? OF COURSE.

... or not

[darknightrain]

IDK, they're already over 17k and it's fucking FB. :|a

[shinaka]

Thanks for the credit (and I'm really sorry for not speaking up about it in the IRC channel earlier but wow, the con really burnt me out x.x

[oftendistracted]

No worries on both counts!

That friend count thing might be an 'if' rather than a 'when' - it's been stalled at 13k for a couple days now. Fortunately, they make it sound like the store is separate to EngloidMiku so we might get it regardless. I was pretty much thinking they could pair up with Kinokuniya, yeah, because they've already got experience selling this stuff in a Western market.

[shinaka]

The article said they started out with 12,102 friends. As of 3 pm (central) monday, miku has 15, 143 friends.

[oftendistracted]

Yeah. I expect it's gone up today as it's the first weekday / the first day that people at the con would have gotten home and to their own computers. Even then, it was only up 1,000 friends on Sunday. That's... substantially less of an early rush than I would have expected.

[anonymous]

I would like it if they kept her voice, but it will be a limited market, and I don't understand exactly how they would make her sing english. I think working on Luka's english and the engloids would be a great thing, either way. And I fully support some kind of Vocaloid store (as long as they ship to TX).

[oftendistracted]

I'm assuming their talk of a 'store' really doesn't mean an actual physical location, or at least that if it does it'll include a mail order component. You couldn't cover all of the US otherwise, at least not with a starting venture.