EA Sports to Replace Physical Manuals with In-game, Digital Manuals

EA Sports has announced that all of their future releases will arrive without instruction booklets. The change is an effort to go green and cut manufacturing costs, and the first victim is Fight Night Champion, already in stores.

Ubisoft was the first publisher to ditch the manual, instead sticking a one-page sheet with a bunch of warnings and legal info in the box. EA Sports seems to be following suit, adding (as Kotaku reports), that the in-game tutorial has largely replaced the game manual, anyway.

Thus far, this seems to be a move within EA Sports and not EA as a whole. With the company publishing for several partners, including Crytek with their upcoming Crysis 3 and Bioware with Mass Effect 3 later in the year, it’s still unclear whether those games will be affected by the change.

For those that love to keep a game collection, the impending digital takeover continues to be an easier pill to swallow. I love my expansive collection of games, but as soon as I saw the changes to game cases, I knew it was time to move on. The lack of manuals makes the shiny new product even less fun to open on release day. Will you be annoyed if the next big Bioware RPG comes without a nice, thick instruction manual, or will you sleep better knowing you saved a few trees (and EA a whole bunch of money)?