I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do when I get a new game is to rip it open, head on to the bathroom and read the manual.  I guess I could say new games make me gotta go – I don’t know, it’s a guy thing I think.  Either way, I’m not pleased to find out that this will no longer be the case, as EA has announced today that it is all eliminating paper game manuals and reducing printed materials in its packaged products by 40%.  Instead, players can access the manual on-disc thru the options menu, or download them from the EA Support website.

They’ll be ditching the manual in future games coming to the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC – with EA Sports taking the lead.  We’re already familiar with the lack of the manual thanks to The Sims 3 Outdoor Living Stuff, so we should get use to it.

“EA is committed to a healthy and sustainable environment,” said John Schappert, Chief Operating Officer at Electronic Arts. “We are reducing packaging materials, eliminating printed manuals and increasing the availability of digital content at EA.com.”

I’m all for saving the environment, so I can’t really put up a fuss with this.  However, I don’t think they made a wise choice when it came to releasing Barnacle Bay in stores.  Talk about a waste of a DVD case, eh?

News via IGN