Revolution definitely not the final name

[Weltall]

This is the fault of how small game boxes are, not of the uselessness of manuals... console manuals have always been useless, for the most part, but PC manuals used to be great... now they stink and are as useless as console ones because of cost saving and these lame miniboxes that now all PC games sell in.

Of course, PC games shipping without manuals (or manuals just on CD) to save money goes way back, 1996 at least, but even so, at least back then those games were the exception, not the rule... sadly that has not been true for some time now. And even the games which COULD have good manuals are sabotaged by the requirement to make them about the size of a postage stamp to fit in those tiny boxes... (Warcraft III's quite underwhelming manual, for instance, when compared to WCI/II/SC)

I think you have it backwards, really. I think the reason manuals are disappearing is because they are less necessary than ever. With the age of PDF files and informative websites, not to mention a gaming population that is older and more experienced than in years past, it's just not as feasable to spend money writing and publishing a gigantic novella for a game. I know you like them for the novelty, but the fact is, an instruction manual is primarily intended to serve as a guide to initiate the gamer into the various basic functions of gameplay. As I stated before, there are so many websites now devoted to the more superfluous aspects of what used to reside in manuals that now it's just not worth the effort involved in making a large manual, or the added cost of shipping a box that is larger and heavier for it. If they were really that necessary, it's likely they would remain. That they don't is proof that they are not.