I have been gaming since the Vic-20 and Intellivision. When my parents bought me games for my birthday or Christmas, I always had a blast playing Intellivision Baseball or Space Armada. Inside the big cartridge box was always a nice manual telling you exactly how to play the game. Most of those games were fairly simple, and did not require a huge manual to play.
In the 80's, games became more complicated. Wizardry, Bard's Tale, RPG's became common, and the instrution manuals did too. If a game required a manual with 200 pages, it was printed and shipped with the game. I remember flight simulators that came with books that were massive!
The trend in the 90's and into today seems to be less is more. There are still massive games being created, but you may receive a manual that is 20 pages! When I picked up my copy of Madden 09, the book gave the very basic commands. Yes it told me how to throw and run, but it did not show me how to do the things that make you WIN! Why not tell me how to do everything?? World of Warcraft is a great game, but the book should help a noob out more than it does.
I understand that publishers want to save money by cutting back on printing pages, but if I am paying $60 for a game, give me the knowledge on how to play your game properly! Most games do not need huge books, but the ones that do, well do the right thing and DO IT!
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
I agree. I used to be able to sit down for than a few mintes and be able to read the manual for the backstory of every main character, a good description of the most common enemies, a description of weapons, and the back story of the game itself.
Now all you get is basic controls, maybe a paragraph on the backstory and nothing else. I used to judge wether or not to buy a game based on what the manual said about the game, now I just have to play it.
Soon it will be a single sheet of paper folded in half with the pic of the game on front, a warning and a advert inside and copyright stuff on the back =D
The reason new games don't require a book detailing the entire back story is because games now have long cinemas explaining the back story. Games used to not be able to cover that in game so it needed a book explaining it.
I agree, give me something to get excited about before I pop the disc in.