UPDATE: Guitar Hero 3 mono issue being fixed with new discs (2008)
Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 10:02am by Jack
As previously reported here on Infendo, Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii only played tracks in mono. It was sloppy, unfortunate, and needed a fix ASAP. Well, a fix is coming, but it won’t arrive until early 2008.
Activision relayed this statement to IGN on the issue today:
“We recently became aware that some consumers have not been able to enjoy the full audio output in the Nintendo Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. We are currently working with Nintendo and are planning to issue an improved audio experience in future versions of the game,” said Activision spokeswoman Rhy-Ming Poon. “We expect to have re-mastered discs available by early 2008 and we will be offering consumers replacement discs at no cost once they become available. We thank all of our customers for their support and patience.”
This was a huge mistake on the part of the developer and the publisher. I’m hoping this is simply a case of negligence and not some subconscious bias against the system. Either way, it was unacceptable.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:36 am
“We will be offering consumers replacement discs at no cost”
They better! It makes sense, though. It was pointed out before that this was the kind of problem that you can’t just fix with an update, it’s a problem inherent with the game. The sad part is most consumers probably won’t realize that there’s a problem, and even if they do, they probably wont know that the replacement discs are available, and will continue to rock out monaurally.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:48 am
I’m totally giggling like an inappropriate little kid at this point.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Finally. Now I can buy GH3 (in 2008).
December 7th, 2007 at 11:44 am
possibly “intentional” bias against the system? kind of makes you wonder…
December 7th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
So just for a clarification…If I do want to go out and grab this “updated” version of GHIII, how will I know if it is the mono or stereo version?
I’m sure it won’t be on the box.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
when will these be available/how will we get them?
December 7th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
And what about the customers that live in countries outside the US (as in my case since I live in Mexice) where replacement discs are never mailed or made available?
December 7th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
The sad part is most consumers probably won’t realize that there’s a problem
How is that sad? If they don’t notice, then who cares? A lot of people play games through the crappy speakers on their TVs, so it really doesn’t affect them.
December 7th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
It’s funny…before the story broke, I never noticed. After the story broke, I still barely noticed. Then last night when I picked up the game after not playing it for more than a week, it was noticeable as hell.
I look forward to being able to send in my disc for a replacement, as long as it doesn’t get stolen out of the mail like a good chunk of my Gamefly rentals have been.
December 8th, 2007 at 1:04 am
@ Josh S.: Rough neighborhood you live in there, huh? That sucks.
I will be quite happy to get my new disc as it does sound kinda bad (GH1 & 2 on my PS2 sound much better). Am I the only one that thinks it sounds bad when you use “star power”? Everything gets all muddy and muffled. I hope the newer sound will fix that, if it’s related.
December 8th, 2007 at 5:39 am
Infendo Radio DID IT - they’ll replace the discs. Good job.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
I’m glad Activision is doing this to finally shut up the vocal minority who actually care about this.
That being said, I agree, its not “sad” that no one will notice. Whats the point in having customers bothered by something so trivial? The fact that most people won’t notice simply goes to show how irrelevant it is. Especially considering that they are fixing it. I own the original version and have no intention of bothering with a replacement. I beat the game on expert without ever noticing any issues and even having read about it, still don’t notice any problems, so I doubt it will cost Activision too much to do the right thing here.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Its not irrelevant to me.
Just because someone else supposes that most people won’t notice doesn’t mean that they’re correct.
They collected the same money from Wii users as the other platforms, and don’t have the common decency to package the correct audio track. Do you realize how many levels of QA had to drop the ball for this to happen?
Wii isn’t the red headed step child here.
Why do they treat it as less important than a PS2?
Why is it going to take so long to come up with discs? They should hire AOL to ship the updates. I’ll bet they’d have been ready last week.