As stated above, the guitar doesn't translate to the real life instrument at all. The rockband/GH guiter, when played on hard and expert, does help quite a bit. I've played acoustic on and off for a few years and mostly fingerpick the guitar. One of the challenges for the early learner is disconnecting each finger from the hand so chords can be formed quickly and accurately. I would suspect that if someone were to play to a point of getting good with hard/expert and then pickup up the real guitar via lessons, they would spend much less time at the beginning trying to get their fingers to do what they want -- especially the ring and pinky fingers... Just my .02. YMMV.
I hate trolls.
Systems I currently own: 360, PS3, Wii, DS Lite (2)
Systems I've owned: PS2, PS1, Dreamcast, Saturn, 3DO, Genesis, Gamecube, N64, SNES, NES, GBA, GB, C64, Amiga, Atari 2600 and 5200, Sega Game Gear, Vectrex, Intellivision, Pong. Yes, Pong.
