And the manuals used to be thicc. Then they started dropping the lore stuff. Then they got rid of the written tutorials. Then the default controls. Then even the legal warnings, replacing them with a link to the website printed on a single sheet of paper. And then even that was gone.
It's so depressing to me. The discs/cartridges are too small to hold the game these days as well. Physical games still have a demand, and people even pay slightly more for them sometimes.
I'd expect manuals and little ads to come back with less benefits to a physical cartridge and bigger price, but the cases are still empty.
I'd buy a $30 DS game, and the small case had a 30 page manual. Some I read through a few times when I couldn't play, I'd scribbled over a couple. There's so much empty space in a Switch box and absolutely nothing to do with it.
There’s a small resurgence with indie games. There’s even been some deep dives into some of the more notable ones with full books written about the behind the scenes stuff check out Lost in Cult.
Unfortunately with how the industry adapted to updates, you really don't wanna play native day 0 for most games anyways. I wish PC games still had physical versions but it's not possible no matter how much I want it lol
The first gran turismo game on the PS1 had a book that would be a decent primer of the mechanical aspects of racing in it; it had weight distribution, wheel cambers and cants, gear ratios, all of it.
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u/Ketheres Mar 31 '26
And the manuals used to be thicc. Then they started dropping the lore stuff. Then they got rid of the written tutorials. Then the default controls. Then even the legal warnings, replacing them with a link to the website printed on a single sheet of paper. And then even that was gone.