Ubisoft Says No More Game Manuals

thsoundman writes with this excerpt from The Gamers Blog: "No more manuals? Ubisoft announced last week that they will be ditching the trend of printing instruction manuals for new games under the 'green' initiative. While no other publishers have jumped on that 'green' train just yet, it is likely that others will follow suit. Printed manuals have been part of gaming since you bought PC games in plastic bags. There have been many standout eras for manuals, such as the NES-era booklets to the manuals that accompanied Electronic Arts vinyl-sized game sleeves. Some may argue that the advancement in on-screen contextual commands and first-level tutorials have made the manual pointless, but is this really the case?"

Comments

Re:Pfft, yeah, "GREEN!"

[notommy]

Exactly. If they're so green, why sell something the size of a small 100 page paperback in a box the size of a dictionary? Not only is that a waste of packaging material, it's also wasteful for storage and shipping when all the trucks, trains and planes are carrying is essentially air. "green" my ass. I hate the hypocrisy of this green movement.

Re:Why bother with manuals?

[Totenglocke]

I don't think single player is any more valuable than multiplayer. The ridiculous amount of time spent by the population on Call of Duty is a good indicator of this. I would also say that games like Mario Kart, WiiPlay and the various Rock Band titles have given me and my family significantly more than 20 hours of play-person-hours.

Yes, but multiplayer is repetitive (not to mention when it comes to online matchups, it's no fun playing with the douchebag 12 year olds that you find swarming most servers). A single player game has an objective, so I would definitely say it's more important. I've never played Halo 3 in single player, but I've played it plenty in multiplayer - sure, the maps change, but it's pretty much the same thing every time - if the single player mode actually has something to make it unique and not a repetition-fest, then it's infinitely more valuable than the multiplayer.