EA Sports has joined the likes of Ubisoft in ceasing all print manuals in all sports titles. In what will surely be a growing trend, the manual will instead be on the disc itself in digital format.
EA Sports spokesman Rob Semsey confirmed the studio’s change to digital manuals. The switch officially began with Fight Night Champion, which states:
Thanks for helping us reducing the amount of paper in our products.
While not printing manuals does help the environment in the sense that trees won’t be felled for that specific purpose, it also helps EA’s bottom line by taking the whole production process. PR won’t spin it that way, but that was most certainly the biggest factor in this decision. However, don’t expect the savings to be passed onto the consumer. Fight Night Champion still retails for $59.99.
Paper manuals might seem like holdouts from a bygone era, they are quite awesome if done right. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Regarding EA, they were redundant and a complete waste of paper. A flimsy, black and white manual with the game’s controls, credits, and the ever-present “Notes” page is not worth a tree.
Actually, does anyone use the “Notes” pages in the manuals?
Source: Kotaku
