Ubisoft ditches manuals in effort to go green

by Steven Williamson on 27 April 2010, 15:58

Tags: PC, Xbox 360, PS3

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Ubisoft announced last Monday that it is doing away with paper manuals traditionally included with videogames for many, many years, in an effort to be more eco-friendly.

Along with the elimination of paper inserts and manuals, Ubisoft has also partnered with Technimark, Inc. to create eco-friendly DVD cases for its PC game. Splinter Cell: Conviction, which releases on the 30th of April. This will be the first of Ubisoft's titles to sport one of the new cases.

Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft North America had this to say: “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.”

I've always enjoyed reading my manuals in the luxury surroundings of the downstairs loo and will certainly miss having something to flick through.

Are you likely to miss the reading material or do you think it's about time more effort was devoted to saving the trees?


HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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Posted by Saracen - Tue 27 Apr 2010 15:59
Are you likely to miss the reading material or do you think it's about time more effort was devoted to saving the trees?
I think it's more likely to be effort devoted reducing costs …. or shifting to a download-only distribution model, which is largely the same thing. Yes, I read the manuals, certainly for the more complex games.
Posted by kalniel - Tue 27 Apr 2010 16:01
Eco friendly cases are a great idea. Manuals.. well good ones had already gone the way of the dodo well before this announcement. It's not like Ubisoft have published any meaty RPGs that need them recently anyway.
Posted by GheeTsar - Tue 27 Apr 2010 16:03
While I prefer games to not require a manual and have an in game tutorial or steady learning curve to learn as you go, if there is a need for one I much prefer a hard copy and will very rarely look at an electronic one.

This smacks of a penny pinching exercise to me.
Posted by finlay666 - Tue 27 Apr 2010 17:12
I'd like to see them integrated into the game instead of having to faff on online

Open start menu> Read manual and have a reader pop up would be nice, more convenient too especially as you can't really read a manual and play at the same time
Posted by jim - Tue 27 Apr 2010 19:02
Haha - “green”.

Bit like M&S making carrier bags chargeable for “green” purposes and then donating the profits to charity. Smooth.

I agree though, in-game manuals are the best. You can learn so much more with a brief tutorial than a paper manual in the same amount of time. And if the game has a decent interface, then it will provide a decent encyclopaedia that fits smoothly into the game, which removes the need to look up data in the manual. And it also improves immersion in my eyes, so no real problems there.

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