@Laoldar, Yeah, it's my opinion as well that the sound isn't that bad nor obvious except to the most audiophilic Wii gamers. The fact that this issue took quite a while to surface is a testament to the non-obviousness of the problem.
However, this still doesn't justify the fact that the game did not deliver what it supposedly should.
While I noticed a few wonky sound issues (especially when playing co-op...and star power sounds a bit echo-y), people shouldn't think that the game sounds bad. We have a surround system and it sounds great. It would probably sound even better if (when) this was fixed, but the game doesn't sound bad. I haven't run across another Wii owner that has complained about the sound on their copy. We're too busy worrying about the placement of our pinky fingers :)
According to this article, audio output from the Wii version has been proven to be in Mono, despite the game being advertised as capable of Dolby Pro Logic II output. In an official statement, Activision has claimed that they are already working on the issue.
According to Jesse Divnich, analyst for The simExchange, the Nintendo Wii version is predicted to outsell the PlayStation 3 version by a two-to-one margin when all is said and done.
"The prediction market’s expectations imply that Wii consumers prefer originality over conformity, innovation over similarity, and more importantly, titles that are just simply fun to play," he recently opined.
Just to update the WFC numbers. For the week ending Nov 4 (first full week of numbers for this game), Guitar Hero 3 waas NUMBER 2 for worldwide connections, with over 622,000 connections and second only to Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. This was more than double the connections for Animal Crossing, Mario Kart and Mario Strikers Charged (individually).
I'm not claiming that this game moved anywhere near 600,000 units. I'm simply pointing out that it's quite popular. I saw some users on here estimating sales by the number of accounts on guitarhero.com and I feel that most Wii users won't bother to link their accounts to that site.
There's really not a whole lot to "get" about Guitar Hero, but whatever there is, you absolutely have to get it right. If the song selection stinks, or if the note layouts are boring or don't make musical sense, or if the strum/fret timing is off...then the whole game suffers for it. These are the three critical components, and Neversoft absolutely nailed them.
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Yeah, it's my opinion as well that the sound isn't that bad nor obvious except to the most audiophilic Wii gamers. The fact that this issue took quite a while to surface is a testament to the non-obviousness of the problem.
However, this still doesn't justify the fact that the game did not deliver what it supposedly should.