Guitar Hero III Wii Fix Announced by Activision
Friday, December 28th, 2007So, it seems that the awaited fix to the mono sound issue for GHIII on the Wii has been announced. Having already been through the process, I can tell you what to expect.
If you call (866) 780-8286 and ask to pre-register, you’ll give up your name, address, phone number, and email address. Within 10-14 days, you’ll receive a postage-paid mailer. You send this mailer off with your GHIII disc, and 10-14 days later, you’ll receive your new GHIII disc with non-crippled sound. 20-28 days round trip, half of which you’ll spend without use of your game.
So, what’s wrong with this? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that you’ll be deprived of the use of your game for a week or two. The law talking guys usually call this cause of action. Never mind that Activision already had to open up Pandora’s box of fraud with the whole Dolby Digital logo on the box with monaural sound inside. Now, in order to fix their wrong, they’re forcing customers to give up use of their game for “ten to fourteen days” (any bets on how long it takes this wait to stretch into six or eight weeks?). If they’re trying to make plaintiff counsel’s job easy in the class action lawsuit over the fraud case, this is it.
What they SHOULD do, in addition to this, is allow for folks to purchase the upgrade (say $40 or $50, to minimize ebay arbitrage), provide a mailer for the old disc, and upon receipt of the old disc, credit all or a substantial portion of the purchase price. What they’re doing is pushing folks to keep a substandard product, or explore alternatives that allow for playing games off of “backup” copies of discs.