The importance difference being that Activision has fixed Guitar Hero III for Wii. Our new friend Mike Seedon emailed today to let me know that a designer at Valve has acknowledged that among The Orange Box for PS3’s other issues is a lack of full surround sound, unless you’re playing it over an HDMI connection. It’s not mono, but rather Pro Logic II, so most people wouldn’t notice the problem without really looking for it. Still, the discrepancy is yet another solid illustration at just how lazy this port was. Add this audio issue, and the fact that Valve appears to be in some way involved with resolving the issue, to that long and embarrassing list of issues the game is facing and things are looking pretty bleak.

We’re working on getting the optical cable support into an update. I’ll post when I have details.

Why bleak? Well, the acknowledgment came last December, and while Valve’s Jay Stelly’s quote implied it was being worked on, that seems an awful long time to wait on such a simple issue.

Thanks, Mike.