Ubisoft cares for the environment, and to prove it, they’ve announced that starting this holiday, they’ll be ditching paper manuals and replace them with in-game digital manuals for your newest video games. This is in effect for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC titles.
The first title that will see this change is Ubisoft’s upcoming Shaun White Skateboarding releasing this holiday.
“It’s pretty cool that Ubisoft is making a conscious effort to go green with its new video game packaging,” commented Olympic Gold Medalist Shaun White. “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.”
It’s good to see Ubisoft going green, that’s for sure. Although, I’m sure there are a lot out there who are going to miss their game manuals. I sure know a few.
An interesting move which will no doubt bring positive publicity to Ubisoft from non-gaming media as well as within.
I know I’ll miss the manuals though, as a games collector I always like to keep and admire a manual in perfect condition, many years after the release of the game.
That said, I have a number of PC titles which did not come with manuals, but rather contained the instructions etc in a PDF on the disc itself, similar in a way to what Ubi are suggesting here.
Either way, its an original idea and it will be interesting to see if other developers follow suit. I do hope some stay with traditional manuals though; it’s like an E-Book: does the job but is never as good as the ‘real thing’.
It’d be nice if they also released the manuals as a free downloadable app for iPod/iPhone/iPad. Easy out of game access for those who have one of the devices.
Saving trees is not why they are doing this. They are cutting corners to make more profit while make those that enjoy paper manuals suffer. That is just a front. Its just like the idea with game cases becoming more flimsy.