VocaVerse Network

Could be that he never had an English VB, unlike GUMI, nor any banks since V4. That's a trait all the characters who went into obscurity have in common. MEIKO & KAITO have got English VBs, plus they are actually carried as "Hatsune Miku and friends", IA got an English VB plus ONE and HIPPI to support her, flower got a new VB, GUMI got new VBs, Una got new VBs. Just not Gackpo. He got left out, like Lily, CUL, etc.

Another reason might be his VP - GACKT. Maybe he is just too expensive for INTERNET to work with long-term, as he seems to be very popular in Japan, unlike most other VPs. How many VPs are there who were and still are more popular than their VOCALOID counterparts? Fukase Satoshi maybe, who's VOCALOID didn't get updated since V4 either. Porter Robinson, who's VOCALOID just got made.

I think having a famous VP is not good for a VOCALOID character in the long run.

I have to mention that male vocaloids or vocalsynths in general are not as popular as female counterparts and because of this, male vocaloids is unable to generate enough income for the companies to considered. Unfortunate.

@IO+ It's true that being male might also be considered a disadvantage in a market, where the consumer base consists of predominantly adult male music producers, but simply being male would not hurt Gackpo. After all, he was the 3rd most popular male VOCALOID character after Kagamine Len and KAITO for most of the time. He dominated the niche while he was new. He didn't have the bonus of being marketed in the same team as Hatsune Miku, or Kagamine Rin. He was all by himself and still rocked.

Other male vocal synths got updates, such as Yuezheng Longya AI (closed beta) and ZOLA Project V6, while Len and KAITO will stay relevant for a long time thanks to Hatsune Miku media alone. Len and KAITO, as characters, don't require fresh voicebanks as often, as long as they keep being fed by the Hatsune Miku franchise machine. INTERNET failed to build such a media franchise around their characters, as is evident by their big number of obscure FEMALE characters, like CUL and kokone.
Gackpo got replaced by Otomachi Una in terms of company and fan attention, while GUMI remained a strong solo.

What keeps Gackpo going is just... old stuff from back when he was popular. Old stuff and the occasional merch drop for the remaining fans creating Gackpo content. He plays no role in any corporate media franchise, not even as a GUMI sidekick, and his company doesn't update his voice banks for some reason. The reason is probably a mix of all above mentioned.

I do think the lack of English VBs (or even AI crosslang support through a V6 or SynthV port) hurt Gakupo in the long term. Among Gakupo's fandom (and knowing that Gackt himself can speak English), it was a common request to Internet Co., but to this day it still hasn't happened. I know Gackt is a busy guy (even taking that period he was ill and needed to put his career on hold into account) and was probably expensive to hire as a VP the first time Gakupo was recorded, but you'd still think Internet would try to meet that demand.

Gakupo is still sometimes mentioned by the Gumi Twitter account (to the point where she's nicknamed him 'Gaku-niichan'), so I don't think Internet has forgotten about him just yet. He just seems to be on the bottom of the list in priorities (much like Lily, who I'm personally more salty about the lack of updates for lol.)

Also his vocal style probably doesn't fit everyone's tuning style (I have a feeling he'd sound weird in my music for example); he's probably best for J-rock and traditional Japanese stuff. And Eurobeat, probably.

@AmazingStrange39 Yeah, Gakupo's voice probably falls into that awkward pitfall of being too unique for most genres. He works great for rock and metal because those are Gackt's usual genres too, but pop? Erm...