Business is about maxing the profit for shareholders. When a manual can be included on the disk for essentially no cost, saving $.10 for every copy sold is a pretty big savings. Even a game only selling a million copies is making an extra $100,000. It is irrelevant if the companies are already bringing in millions of dollars. Companies that are going paperless were already bringing in millions too, but they went paperless to save the penny per sheet.

On another note, does anybody remember when many manuals were gigantic (Such as PC games like SimCity). They were literally like a textbook lol.

I put the game in the disc drive and played the game while I was on the shitter.  I'm okay with that.

Yup, and FS4 pretty much came with a complete manual for flying a real airplane.

Those old pc box games were great, cloth maps, yellowed fake old paper, playing cards and other extras. Nowadays you have special editions for rip off prices with less content. I still have a moving box full of old manuals, heavily used keyboard overlays and maps next to all the old jewel cases. A joy to browse through.

As much as I like them for a "completeness". Who the hell reads game manuals unless there's a period of time between buying the game and being able to play it? :p

Damn it, I forgot about off-TV play!

Totally missed them!

It made me sad that neither Wind Waker HD or the Wonderful 101 included one. :(

Of course GTA V actually had a manual and map, though smaller map than usual

Perhaps you should of wages your war against the gallons of paper adverts you now get in game boxes instead of the thing that use to be fun to read and look at. 

:'(  ITS ALL YOUR FAULT!

The percentage of players who actually read game manuals is a small minority to begin with.

I am playing devil's advocate here because I've been gaming for over 30 years and when I was younger and I actually bothered to read them and appreciated it when game publishers put some effort into them, they were a part of the overall gaming package every time I bought a game.

But, cost savings aside (which is not nothing) and materials aside (ultimately, most of them end up in a landfill if one doesn't recycle them), most people simply don't use them. As it's been pointed out, it's too easy to do an in-game manual and that's if a game doesn't teach the player the controls as a part of the game.

Over the years, game manuals in general (particularly over the last generation) have become little more than a layout of the controller button map with a bunch of warnings, warranty info, legal info, etc. taking up the majority of the insert. I don't care if that's in there.

Granted, if a publisher makes the decision to create a fun manual with a nice layout, color press, production art, etc. that's great; it's something even if most will only flip through it if they even bother with that, but game manuals like this were pretty rare even before it became the trend to stop including them at all.

The reality is unless one peddles in trading and used games, they're all ending up being recycled or in the landfill anyway and I know not everyone who claims they're important or how much they like/want them won't be keeping all their games infinitum. I've kept most of mine over the decades, but I'm an extreme minority.

I don't have a problem with absent manuals and if an old guy who actually read them and collects them can deal with it, I find it hilarious that anyone much younger than me is having trouble with that.