EA Drops Printed Game Manuals in Effort to be Green

EA says that dropping printed game manuals from its games will reduce its printed materials by around 40% in packaged games. In their place they will put game manuals on disc. Personally, I like the fact that they are online for easy reading.

The green initiative is being applied to all titles on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.  The program launched earlier this year with the release of Fight Night Champion on the PS3 and Xbox 360 and Mass Effect 2 on PS3 and will continue with all EA titles shipping across the globe. 

 EA’s on-disc manuals will be easily accessible via the main and pause menus. This will allow players to conveniently view instructional information on the fly as they play. Customers can also find EA digital manuals in multiple languages online at: http://support.ea.com/app/manuals.

In addition to this digital manual initiative, EA also embraces new environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient, and water-conserving technologies in the manufacturing and distribution of its products.  Recently in North America, EA executed a full implementation of Reduced Material DVD Style Cases (RMCs) for PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, and PC-DVD retail products. RMCs require less material and energy to produce than a standard DVD case, are made from 100% polypropylene, and are easy to recycle. EA has also made great progress by eliminating bulky shipping materials and implementing recycled materials whenever possible. 

Well it’s a start for the giant publisher. Hopefully all of this will amount to lower overhead for them (which they didn’t mention because of course it’s all about the environment and not at all about them losing money hand over fist). This could be a nice double bump - better for the environment and their bottom line. Gamers? We get the satisfaction in knowing that we aren’t killing as many trees.