No more instruction booklets in future?

[toythatkills]

Yes, it's unlikely consumers would care if booklets were omitted.

Now you know full well that's not what I meant, so don't you think you're wasting your time and making yourself look a bit of a tit to pretend that it was?

Are you going to continue to ignore what I actually said in some strange quest to appear to speak for everyone, when in actual fact more people want instruction books than you would like to think?

[fallenangle]

I certainly want an instruction booklet. I won't buy a used game without one. If they're well made they're an essential and useful part of the whole package.

Companies like Rockstar make superb ones for the GTA series and far from being redundant I find they're actually much easier to refer to than most on disc tutorials.

There are exceptions of course, some games are so familiar with almost identical control systems, like FPSs, you really don't even need a separate tutorial.

On the other hand there are also more complex games I've come across where the in-game tutorials can be exceptional to the point where the manual probably isn't necessary. Fire Emblem PoR is a case in point: a full but concise animated tutorial or written explanation for every single element can be accessed at any time throughout the game. Wonderfully useful and worthy of high praise.

[Dazzyman]

I miss the 400+ page manuals of PC flight sims etc... you could squash a small child with. Alot of PC stuff ended up same size but PDF for cost cutting (and then of course they all went dvd cases).

Console manuals seem to be getting worse not better, amount Ive noticed now that miss loads out or black and white instead of colour. If you buy say any 2k game you notice less in the manual each year the more they add and dont go over some of the stuff (ie older baseball.basketball and footy used to go over certain rules as well), MLB08 is the latest as it skirts over loads missing for franchise mode.

Army of two - more like piece of paper

[Profit]

In competing with illegal dl and growth of console games, they were phased out. Practical reasons too; with DOS based games and their VGA font, in-game text or a word document/PDF was a bit akward. Nowadays it's just much easier to ALT-TAB to gamefaqs or PDF read.

Although there wasn't much complaints from PC gamers, it wasn't also demanded by buyers. Similar situation with console booklets, most buyers don't want them but have a dated mentality that 'it comes for free' or 'part of the package' maybe pressurises the companies to continue including them for the cost of time.

[Dazzyman]

nowt to do with DOS though PC games came out for years with big manuals for windows and then attached to a cardboard box in a dvd case with manual in seperate its just that the hardcore sims slowly died their death on PC. Ive got loads going up to around 2002 in my plastic pull out boxes for PC with big seperate manuals (ive got literally thousands of PC games orignals as been PC gamer or was for years). Think last major manuals was Civ4 I had. Their was a military navy sim (hostile waters) you could buy direct and get it with a big manual for same price direct instead of pdf. think that was the last biggest one out. Its a shame really as we used to get some cracking keyboard templates as well for PC but PC stuff has gone more console orientated so we dont need big manuals.

[fallenangle]

Perhaps its got to do with the fact 75% of console gamers, at least, are not online with their console and may not have easy internet access at all. Who wants the hassle anyway of going online to look up what maybe essential info on how to play the ?40 game they've just bought?

Lets face it, you could use the argument about instruction manuals to apply across the board not just to video games. Consumers would be up in arms if all they got with their washing machine was a note telling them to log on to a web site for a tutorial.

[Profit]

Yes, I remember several pre-XP games with big booklets. Although the type of PC games haven't changed that much - hardcore flight sims and RTS games are still available and they could warrent big booklets.

I mentioned earlier how companies could use the lack of inclusion of booklets etc to profit from the collector-types by releasing limited editions; and we have certainly seen that with PC games in the past few years, PC RPGs, RTS are sometimes available as big limited edition versions, which could be considered as 'normal' 10 years ago. Collectors would probably prefer that situation with the console market if more games came with Japanese extra goods.

The mentality is interesting though. For a dl PC or console game, nobody expects instructions. But if the same game was release instore for the same/higher price, would collectors still want a booklet? Even if it was released at a higher price to account for the disc and delivery costs collectors probably still want a booklet to feel it's a 'complete package' etc. A sticker of the box saying "this game would cost even more if we had to make instructions" would probably help in that situation

[prinnysquad]

This reminds me of those people who say that physical games are going to be replaced by downloads and mass storage. Get bent: I want a physical product which can't be skanked by the nasties that plague connectivity.

Since I'm a pariah at odds with most people and with a dated mentality, I might as well enjoy this precious time I have now with useless, cost and time-ineffective printed irrelevancies. Wow, a technological dinosaur, who would have thought it? I'll get me pipe and slippers.

[Profit]

The problem with that of course, is that a lot of DL games wouldn't even be produced if they had to find a physical distribution method.

[Dazzyman]

Well I bought Medieval Total War 2 collectors edition last year on PC soley because it has an extra manual and flowchart whats not in standard version. They did the same and I bought it for latest Silent Hunter last year, if you bought it direct from Ubisoft and bought it for CE with tin etc..you got a proper recognition book instead of a pdf to print out (as its hard to spot em). PC gamers will pay for stuff like this for printed manuals they also did it with the offshot of Falcon 4 sequel I think that was 2yrs ago. I personally need manuals even crap 2page 360 Army of two ones as I need to have em for the buttons as I forget, I for one detest PDF manuals and in the past the few PDF only big PC games I bought I just printed em out anyway.

I think the argument for download only is also hysterical. I know more people now that download PC games all the time because the pdf manual is on the disc where as before they would have soley gone out and bought the game because it had that big chunky manual. Now they dont whinge and say I dont know what Im doing.

[prinnysquad]

I don't mind itsy-bitsy small, cheap DLC, but having a mega box with 100s of gigs of data stored on it fills me with paranoia. My pc's been screwed by hardware failure at least 4 times, one of which it was impossible to retrieve any of the data on the HD. It's a very bitter pill.

[toythatkills]

Similar situation with console booklets, most buyers don't want them...

Waaait a second, what market research is this from?