EA Games Will No Longer Include Printed Manuals
As part as an initiative to save environmental resources, EA recently announced that they will eliminate printed manuals from all of their games.
Instead of paper manuals, EA will provide digital manuals on each copy of their games, which players will be allowed to access both on the main menu and in the game’s pause screen. EA has also stated that they will host digital copies of their manuals on their website. Making the move from printed to digital manuals will ostensibly equate “a 40 percent reduction in printed materials in its packaged goods”.
I’m all for saving trees, but considering that EA posted over a $1 billion loss in 2009 and a $677 million loss in 2010 (and don’t forget that time they slashed 1500 jobs in late 2009), I’m willing to bet that this decision was inspired by a different type of green movement.
So the savings gained from this will be passed on to the consumer right? Right? That makes sense…right?
Boo. Honestly I’d actually rather pay more if it means continuing manuals.
Not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, every time I open a game and it has a piece of shit booklet with no color, limited art, and MAYBE 20 pages of controller settings, I almost regret taking it out of the box.
On the other, it’s useful to have the manual readily available at a moment’s notice. I guess the in-game option that they’re implementing will work, but who knows.
Sure, no manuals, but I bet they still will include a whole bunch of paper ads for other EA products and strategy guides.
I think I still have my Simcity 2000 manual which was like 200+ pages.
@Ben Stead: You’d think so. But no. They’d just be increasing their profit margin per game. Jerks.
@Ace Flibble: I like manuals in my game. I almost never read them, but I like having them there.
@Wesley: The in-game manual option probably will work, but as I stated above to Ace Flibble…I just like having manuals in my games. It’s a reminder of an older time in gaming where you really did need them; the game wouldn’t hold your hand and lead you through a million tutorial levels. You read the manual and learned how to do the moves, or you died. Simple.
@Aram: Hah! Most likely.
@Kyle Heimbigner: The manual was? You’re kidding. You’re sure you don’t mean the strategy guide?
No, Kyle is right. I had tons of awesome games with manuals that were more like actual books that I could read for days, filled with all sort of excellent flavor info. Plus they used to do awesome creative things like the “Tiger’s Claw” with Wing Commander and all the bonus “feelies” they included in old Infocom games. Sadly, console gaming sort of ruined manuals, and the glory days are long gone.