Guitar Durability

[capitalfn9]

Ok I have to bring this up again. I went to 6 freakin best buys in the last few days in the Southern California Area and all 6 of them had defective guitars and 3 of them I know worked at one point. I refuse to believe that this is all due to misuse of the equipment when the freakin guitar hero 3 controller is sitting right next to it and works perfectly. What in the world is going on? There has to be a problem with these demo guitars and I can only pray they got it fixed before it went gold.

[Kylekillgannon]

Ok I have to bring this up again. I went to 6 freakin best buys in the last few days in the Southern California Area and all 6 of them had defective guitars and 3 of them I know worked at one point. I refuse to believe that this is all due to misuse of the equipment when the freakin guitar hero 3 controller is sitting right next to it and works perfectly. What in the world is going on? There has to be a problem with these demo guitars and I can only pray they got it fixed before it went gold.

Maybe this game just generally gets more in-store attention because people could just as easily stay home and play GH3 than go to a store and play something they already own?

[PetriDish]

You actually make a good point. These units have been available to demo for days/weeks and are breaking quite frequently. But I've seen Guitar Hero 2 X-plorer units still working one year later. Hell I saw the PS2 SG guitar working 2 years after being put out there.

Maybe they used cheap material so that the overall price could go down.

[tbradshaw]

1. The Les Paul guitar clearly has a more rugged strum bar than the Rock Band guitar. It can apparently handle the obscene abuse that demo units get at a Best Buy while the Rock Band guitar apparently can't.

2. It's painful to hear all of these "X-plorer one year later, SG two years later" stories. There's no reason to believe that they have had the exact same guitar out there for two years. They are trivial to replace when they break, just literally open another one.

However, the money question isn't "what's wrong with the demo units?" The real question is "The Rock Band guitars can't handle the public abuse from an open demo station. Can they handle the regular use of excited gamers?"

You can bring up the problems with Best Buy demo units all day long (and everyone does), but it doesn't actually answer the second question. We don't know if the guitars can handle regular use. I bet that they probably can handle regular use, but I agree that the demo units do not inspire confidence.

Of note, no reviewers (who have now had a copy of the game for several weeks) have mentioned problems with durability of the guitars.

[ThePaska]

Have you ever seen GH II guitars in store, they are beat up as anything else. I expect this is the same for Rock Band and GH III. Heck my GH III guitar was shipped to me busted. I doubt Rock Bands guitar will turn out badly though, at the Best Buy I played at it has seemed to have held up fine.

[Bakkster]

Of note, no reviewers (who have now had a copy of the game for several weeks) have mentioned problems with durability of the guitars.

I'm waiting for either a reviewer to break their peripherals, or for release to hear the general state of the peripherals. I think once people get them home and treat them the way you treat your own property, we will hear very few stories of broken periphs.