Ubisoft No Longer Including Instruction Manuals for 360 and PS3 Games

So let me get this straight, you want us to pay $60 for a "complete" and "brand new" game with no instructions? You better drop the price you tree huggin' hippies, because I'm not buying.
 
I love that they are going green. TBH, I hardly read instruction manuals and most games have in-game tutorials, and IIRC Ubisoft's manuals were black and white to begin with, so I feel like it's not a great loss.

Internal Ubisoft numbers indicate that manufacturing one ton of paper used to create game manuals uses two tons of wood from 13 trees, enough energy to heat an average home for a year, 13,000 gallons of wastewater and 6,000 pounds of carbon dioxide.
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In light of statistics like that, it seems almost selfish to want manuals when they can make them even better if they do it digitally.
 
MegaDrive20XX said:
So let me get this straight, you want us to pay $60 for a "complete" and "brand new" game with no instructions? You better drop the price you tree huggin' hippies, because I'm not buying.
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My feelings are the same.
They should make games with manuals, and som without manuals, and let the consumer decide.
 
I can't believe this! With Ubisoft not including manuals for PS3/XBOX 360 games anymore. Why? Because how are we going to play their new games that Ubisoft releases without an instruction manual?! ( /AVGN anger level over 9000 )

EDIT: Please watch the language.
 
MegaDrive20XX said:
So let me get this straight, you want us to pay $60 for a "complete" and "brand new" game with no instructions? You better drop the price you tree huggin' hippies, because I'm not buying.
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Same, I like having a complete game, with a manual. Rather they just sell a downloadable version of the game if they keep it up.

I hope this doesn't catch on with other companies or I may never buy a new game again :T
 
@Snatcher, I concur.

@Mai, so let's take your awesome copy of EARTHBOUND without the instructions for example in this case scenario of having a game without instruction. Would it make you feel bad that the value of this game to be unfair by making you spend the full large price of a complete copy of the same game, feel ripped off just a tad? Just a thought. It's really not so much a matter of reading it, it's for the collectors out there who need to feel complete. Sure we're a small batch, sure it's a small percentage perhaps. Yet I've seen enough customers in my time, who buys a game at GameStop or GameCrazy ask if it has the instructions or not.

So let's say, if Ubisoft was going to make a collector's edition of Assassin's Creed 3 and it does not have a manual of it, that doesn't make it a collector's edition as much imho.

However, I salute them for going green. I just feel they should find another way to offer the instruction booklet no matter what and decrease the value of the game since I'm buying a game without instructions. It's just that, I've noticed whenever people try to save the environment, it cost MORE to make special cases (like Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare 2 for example) to claim it's recycled. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the amount of money spent to make these changes is the same as if the game DID come with the manual.
 
MegaDrive20XX said:
However, I salute them for going green. I just feel they should find another way to offer the instruction booklet no matter what and decrease the value of the game since I'm buying a game without instructions. It's just that, I've noticed whenever people try to save the environment, it cost MORE to make special cases (like Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare 2 for example) to claim it's recycled. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the amount of money spent to make these changes is the same as if the game DID come with the manual.
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It's all about long term. Of course everything new that we do is going to be expensive, but in the long term it will eventually save money. It's always more expensive if you're the early adopter.


Also, it depends on what you feel is worth the money. Is it worth it to spend the same amount of money saving trees? Or would you rather just have that money go to manuals? It looks like Ubisoft would rather save trees.
 
The long term always doesn't tell us, which games will be the lucky chosen to fetch high dollar in the future.

Ubisoft needs to speak with schools and colleges then, they waste more paper. Yet, we love them more than video games, right?

All I'm saying, is doesn't your good money deserve the full purchase instead of half the pint of ice cream?
 
As much as some may not like this, I can pretty much guarantee all physical manuals will be phased out eventually. How big of a deal is it? I guess that will vary by person, but overall I do not think enough people really care about having a physical manual to prevent this from happening. Personally when I buy a newer game, I may skim over the manual once or twice if at all. I can't imagine how many others do the same. So is it really worth including the manual simply for the sake of completeness? Again...that is an opinion that will vary. But in the end, I just think this is one of those things that's gonna happen regardless, whether we like it or not. And as with most changes, we just need to look at the bigger picture here.
 
x2 said:
As much as some may not like this, I can pretty much guarantee all physical manuals will be phased out eventually. How big of a deal is it? I guess that will vary by person, but overall I do not think enough people really care about having a physical manual to prevent this from happening. Personally when I buy a newer game, I may skim over the manual once or twice if at all. I can't imagine how many others do the same. So is it really worth including the manual simply for the sake of completeness? Again...that is an opinion that will vary. But in the end, I just think this is one of those things that's gonna happen regardless, whether we like it or not. And as with most changes, we just need to look at the bigger picture here.
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Honestly I wouldn't mind if they passed the savings on to the costumer. I also hated how they were cutting out parts of the case with that recycling symbol. I'd rather they just make them as big as CD cases since they're getting rid of manuals :P
 
Ubisoft is talking about upcoming games. And if none of those have manuals, then there isn't one that comes with a manual to make it more valuable, so what does it matter? You either buy the game or you don't.
 
Mai Valentine said:
Ubisoft is talking about upcoming games. And if none of those have manuals, then there isn't one that comes with a manual to make it more valuable, so what does it matter? You either buy the game or you don't.
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Exactly! It's not gonna detract from future value if it was never there to begin with. Right now we have the standard that a complete game comes with the disc, case and manual, but if this becomes the norm, a complete game will simply be the disc and the original case. So I don't see how it would hurt collectors.
 
MegaDrive20XX said:
All I'm saying, is doesn't your good money deserve the full purchase instead of half the pint of ice cream?
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But I'm not getting half a game, just less paper. The game is still there and the instructions will be in-game.
 
CreepinDeth said:
But I'm not getting half a game, just less paper. The game is still there and the instructions will be in-game.
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And what if it's not?

Mai Valentine said:
Ubisoft is talking about upcoming games. And if none of those have manuals, then there isn't one that comes with a manual to make it more valuable, so what does it matter? You either buy the game or you don't.
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So what does it matter? The value doesn't even come into play until we know for sure it will be valuable years later. That's the only thing that matters, until then...carry on.
 
Yeahhhh, I like feeling like I have a complete game. Don't really care for too many Ubisoft games anyways...this just deters me more.
 
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