Pyt beat me to it, but yeah V, Soundwave will be in the upcoming sequel.
The Transformers movie wasn't meant for just the hardcore fans. It was meant to introduce more people into the franchise. In doing so, they gradually brought the viewers from a world they were familiar with (Teen lifestyles, current wars, etc.) into the world they weren't (Climaxing in the final battle with the Decepticons). If they had just rushed into the fights between Autobots and Decepticons right off the bat and not explained the reasons for them being on Earth and contacting the Whitwickey family, it would have come off as, well, rushed.
I agree that there should have been a bit more focus on the Transformers themselves overall, especially when some characters recieved next to no development at all. (Goodbye Jazz, we hardly knew you... Seriously!)
But for all that people like to nitpick about the movie, I like to concentrate on what was done right. Voice actors, visual effects, real actors, storyline, action, etc. All done great.
Transformers was a cartoon, not a video game
I was listing all adaptation movies in memory that I'd seen. This includes cartoon>live action and video game>live action. Left off direct comic book to live action movies, since that's almost a genre in itself now.
No Mortal Kombat movie was "pretty good"...
The first one was all right. A bit corny, and several bits could have been done better, but it was one of the first video game movies that didn't give a majority of the audience the sour taste of bile in their mouths.