Ubisoft Ditches Paper Game Manuals; Earth Celebrates
Since the dawn of the industry, game manuals have accompanied every game on the market. Whether big or small, color or black and white, you could not find a new game without its manual. With the rise of the internet and in-game tutorials, the need for manuals has quickly evaporated. However, developers have always taken the time and money to include manuals with their games…until now.
In a press release today, Ubisoft announced that beginning with the holiday release of Shaun White Skateboarding, they will not be including paper manuals with the game package. The removal will affect only the company’s PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 titles. According to the release, for every ton of paper Ubisoft used for game manuals, “[it] consumes an average of two tons of wood from 13 trees, with a net energy of 28 million BTU’s (equivalent to average heating and energy for one home/year), greenhouse gases equivalent of over 6,000 lbs of CO2, and wastewater of almost 15,000 gallons.” Instead of the tree wasting paper manuals, Ubisoft will be uploading in-game digital manuals.
Do not fret, as Olympic gold medalist Shaun White believes the move is a sound one, and is ecstatic that his game will be the first to be manual-less.
“It’s pretty cool that Ubisoft is making a conscious effort to go green with its new video game packaging. 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.”
In addition, the company is testing out a new “eco-friendly” packaging, featuring 100% recycled polypropylene. This move will only affect the company’s PC titles.
“Ubisoft is often recognized for making great games, but it’s a special privilege to be the industry leader at saving trees,” commented Laurent Detoc, the president of Ubisoft North America. “Eco-friendly initiatives are important to the global community and introducing in-game digital manuals on Xbox 360 and PS3 is just the latest example of Ubisoft’s ongoing commitment to being a more environmentally conscious company.”
Time will tell whether or not more developers will follow. Personally, I feel nothing beats a physical copy of a game and manual. What about you? Is this just one more step towards an all-digital future? Post your responses in the comments section below.
22 Responses to “Ubisoft Ditches Paper Game Manuals; Earth Celebrates”
To be honest, i wouldn’t care if they didn’t upload one at all. I barely look at the manual, the only time is when i open the game up for the first time waiting for it to load and say “look at the pretty pictures”.
I solute you ubisoft. No one uses those stupid manuals anyways, every company should start doing in game manuals.
everyone should do this. Games give you all you need to know anyway
This is awesome I never look at the manuals anyway. Hopefully every company follows Ubisoft’s example. If they can save the planet and some money..why not?
Game Manual these days suck away. I remember back 5 years ago when the manual use to mean something with in-dept detail and art, now they are nothing.
that’s good for the environment but not why they are stopping paper manuals
they are doing it for 2 reasons – first – cost savings , manuals cost money to print and design
second – they get to play it off with press releases about saving trees and look like they care about the planet …. and many people will believe it’s the only reason they’re stopping paper manuals
I would prefer the physical manual just like the writer of the article. But they better make the manual easy to access. I should be able to pause the game and have the manual with the options or something, I don’t want to have to quit and go to the main menu and choose game manual just to see how to do a certain move.
they should give us cool stickers instead, I always liked game-related stickers.
i could care less about the manual… they just sit in the case from day 1 of purchase anyway
i love manuals it was something to do when you get caught up in a game but you can’t play it.
Wow wait a minute shaun white skateboarding? At least tony hawk was huge for the sport and deserved to be in a title, and white is already the tony hawk of snowboarding. I just don’t get it.
I also agree that its a good cost cutting move and the manuals usaully are worthless.
On the other hand, being effected by the failing printing industry myself, a lot of jobs are lost with small little decisions such as this down the line. Print shops that had contracts with those publishers will soon be handing out layoff slips.
kind of a double edge sword.
What is a manual? I would think most people know the controls of the games and if they dont they would play the game for a moment and press every button to learn the controlls.
yeah that’s how I learn the controls. The manuals are a waste of money and I’ve been saying for ages that games companies should ditch them to save money and resources.
What am I gonna read while sitting on the shitter from now on?
Okay so, manuals have been pretty useless lately – they used to be detailed and have even an introductory tutorial – anymore it just says “hey, heres our game, go play!”. So… I guess I don’t care anymore?
However, the “going green” thing is a bunch of crap. Claiming this saves trees is like saying if we make less french fries we’ll save potatoes. The fact that we use paper means people purposefully plant and grow more trees, just like farming anything else. We in fact have more forests now than ever in the US as a direct result of this. Also, while that CO2 number sounds huge, the human race contributes in total %3 of the world wide CO2 emissions. The majority of the rest comes from volcanoes, rotting carcasses, and forest fires. Saving energy is all well and good, but really, that just means saving money. You could say it reduces CO2 emissions, but again, 3% is pretty negligible. Being “environmentally conscious” seems to equate to looking like you’re doing good for the earth, when you really don’t know squat about it.
So give me my damn manual, for when my internet isn’t working, or reduce the cost of the game by a buck or two.
@BigWoop
Yeah, you will never see the cost savings passed onto the consumer.
You know now that I think of it. They really should make a thin sheet of film type paper, that lets you down load the latest magazines, manuals, books, everything. kind of like a “Kindle” but slimmer…I mean very thin, able to be rolled up like a news paper. It would cut down on a lot of trees being destroyed for the sake of a news paper.
I like the author want to keep manuals, simply because I like the physical copy, but In all honesty its a better move, long term that being said like one of the posters stated above, it will lead to possible layoffs. Hm there needs to be a solution to this problem. Can you imagine everyone having this one sheet and all things that are needed are stored on this sheet and you can review at your leisure, like books, magazines, comics, new, everything…If I was say apple or someone I would def make that a thing of reality and have almost everyone jump on board. make them cheap and try and get them in every home. Then have upgrades and apps…sign deals with all major magazines, books, everything…
Then again I don’t see how you’ll ever be able to find a substitute for good ole fashioned toilet paper
Just a thought
@Graey
no trees are harmed making a newspaper… newsprint is made from 100% recycled paper products and most paper is made from the left overs that the saw mills provide. had to point that out
This will only cut down on game publishers cost and that equals to bigger profits, It will not save our environment one micro % , heck most inks in the printing industry are all soy based now, so you cant even count that as hurting the environment, get rid of the plastic cases will do more
I think we should replace books with a useless electronic device because the human race isn’t on screens enough that we need to take the only piece of medium not yet using screens and change that. Has anyone thought of this yet? Wow I’m going to be a billionaire in fact,
NEW IDEA! Our dreams should be converted into an electronic device! It’ll be amazing everyone will be forced to own one! Wait I forgot what I was pissed off about now.
Anyway the manuals don’t really matter and you can’t say it’s not enviomentally friendly sure the companies do it to save money for their company but in the end they save money and less trees get cut down.
Everywhere you go the greenwashed show up and attack the human race for it’s “evil”.
because taking easy precautions to save your planet is wrong? Why don’t we just let the planet go to hell instead and we can all complain ounce the second ice age starts or we run out of resources. There’s stable proof of this and all this is about is conserving the planet for generations to come,
this isn’t green peace trying to force their values onto companies it’s a company doing something to save money and look out for the future of the planet at the same time.