I like paper manuals. They're pretty, and fill up the case. I'm not gonna cry over this but it makes me wonder how long until they ditch cases and discs altogether and go fully digital. That will be a sad day indeed.

I'm not bothered, although it would be nice if they produced a electronic downloadable copy so it can be read on a PC and not just your console. How often do you guys ever read a manual in all honesty, maybe once before you play and the odd time to check a control? Adding the manual into the pause menu would solve one of those problems and a electronic copy, say website based for example could allow you to read before playing in comfort too. If done properly this could benefit gamers.

With Ubisoft on the quest to dumb their games even more than they done already the manual won't be needed anyway.

Step 25 to full digital distribution:
"remove manuals pretending it's to save trees"

Rather than pretend to save trees and ditching manuals (by the way there are massive sustainable forestry initiatives going on all over the world so you are not really redusing the amount of green in the world by using paper, if you get the paper from sustainable sources), how about making the manuals an actual value added part of the whole game purchase? Some back story, pretty pictures, concept art all sorts of nifty stuff.

I mostly agree that today's manuals are next to pointless, but in reality one way to fight piracy is to make the game manuals "must have" items which incentives people to buy the real deal instead of a pirated copy, which pirates will never to to the bother and expense of re-producing the manual. People are proposing this sort of thing as a way to combat music piracy too. Find a way to make buying the real thing lead to an overall experience that is impossible to obtain by going to illegal sources.

I agree. By dematerializing games, there's no value in the product but the game itself. That's not going to help against piracy.

If they all had as much content as a Lunar2 complete box, we'd be in for a treat (and I'd buy more games).

I've bought more board games than video games in the last 5 months. Does that give me the right to boycott Ubisoft?

Booooo...

Although considering manuals these days, it isn't much of a loss. Still, I would rather see a return to the way manuals used to be over eliminating them completely. This is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion.

I'll be interested to see what 'in-game instructions' means. I doubt it is going to mean an electronic manual. More likely, it is just going to be tutorials.