Has the end of the era of paper manuals begun? Ubisoft has announced that videogame instruction booklets will no longer be included in their upcoming Xbox 360 and PS3 games. To replace them, digital manuals will be available to read from in-game instead.
This is supposedly part of the companies “going green” initiative which will also include new PC “ecoTech” packaging, where PC game cases will be made out of recyclable material. Of course, it’s more likely that this is simply a cost-cutting measure. Because if Ubisoft was REALLY serious about “going green” and helping the environment, they’d extend the digital manuals AND egoTech boxes to all of their platforms.
Personally, I’m a bit sad to see the end of videogame manuals, something that will likely only increase as more companies follow Ubisoft’s lead, and now that entire games are available digitally. I have a long list of manuals that I’ve collected going back to the NES days, and I’ve always enjoyed reading them. Of course, some companies make much better and prettier manuals than others . . . I always hated the crappy black and white ones. And some of them, like Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project instruction book, even included several typos!
Here is what Sean White had to “say” about the new initiative.
“It’s pretty cool that Ubisoft is making a conscious effort to go green with its new video game packaging,” White said in a canned statement. “I’m excited for my new skateboarding game to come out and stoked that it will be the very first Ubisoft game to be part of their green packaging initiatives.”
Splinter Cell: Conviction meanwhile will be the first PC game to make use of the new cases.
Via Joystiq