In a move that is sure to make an impact in environmental waste as well as quite possible annoy a very large percentage of gamers, Ubisoft is making the move to digital instruction booklets.
In a press release today Ubisoft dictated that starting with Shaun White’s Skateboarding this coming holiday season they would be not including a paper instruction booklet and that the game would contain a digitized version on the disc itself for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 titles. PC titles start with the digital distribution on April 27, 2010 with Splinter Cell: Conviction.
Ubisoft internal data shows that producing one ton of paper used in Ubisoft’s game manuals consumes an average of two tons of wood from 13 trees, with a net energy of 28 million BTU’s (equivalent to average heating and energy for one home/year), greenhouse gases equivalent of over 6,000 lbs of CO2, and wastewater of almost 15,000 gallons.
What do you think about this change? Do you still read the instruction booklets?