Thanks for the quality manuals.

[Megamixer]

One of the lesser discussed travesties brought upon gaming this generation is the loss of instruction books. Sure, they were going black & white towards the end of last generation but it wasn't the majority and they were still there. Come the current era, not only are most of them without color but they've become extremely skimpy & barebones. I've read the some publishers have stopped issuing them altogether. My PSN copy of Burnout Legends doesn't include a digital manual. That's just cheap and lazy!

So as I sit here pawing through Solatorobos manual and remembering the fine ones included in other XSeed games I have (both physical & digital), I just want to say thanks. Keeping bringing us colors, story prologues, character bios, nice art, solid information on gameplay, and not condensing them to 10 pages or less. :)

[Fabrizo]

Thanks for the quality manuals

Seconded :D I love it when a company takes the time to do a proper instruction booklet. I was completely blown away when first opening Ys Sevens manual, you can really tell it was put together by people that care about the product they're making.

A lot of games these days use the same art for their cover, booklet, and disc (Darksiders, Assassins Creed II, and Sonic All-Stars Racing come to mind), not to mention having no inner cover art and black&white booklets that're about 5 pages long each. It's sad that so many companies these days don't seem to care about the final product at all.

[Ryos]

I can't think of any company that does a better job with (physical at least) manuals than XSEED. And you're right, at the rate most companies are approaching it, we're getting to the point they're an endangered species. I know a lot of people never open them up, but I do!

[kknd]

EDF: Insect Armageddon doesn't come with instruction manual and I wasn't happy about it, then GoW3's manual has... 2 pages... wtf?!

Solatorobo, bam! 40 pages FC manual with bonus soundtrack, it makes me wonder why companies claim that they couldn't afford to print a few pages of manuals when we are already paying 10$ more for games.

[AngrySalesMonkey]

Thank you very much for the nice callout, definitely one of the things that I'm proudest of here - every single title we've ever released has a full-color manual. I've been shocked at some other games I've purchased that only had a black&white 8-pager, and that includes English, French and Spanish.
Can't guarantee that it will continue forever since I'm not the be-all end-all here (though I do control the packaging elements as part of my marketing budget), but I will always fight for as attractive a package as possible.

[Ventara]

Thank you very much for the nice callout, definitely one of the things that I'm proudest of here - every single title we've ever released has a full-color manual. I've been shocked at some other games I've purchased that only had a black&white 8-pager, and that includes English, French and Spanish.
Can't guarantee that it will continue forever since I'm not the be-all end-all here (though I do control the packaging elements as part of my marketing budget), but I will always fight for as attractive a package as possible.

I'm flipping through the manual for Brave Story, and though it has several shades of gray, I think calling it full-color would be stretching it.

But a very detailed manual nonetheless, and all the other XSEED games I have are indeed full-color and fantastic, so kudos and thanks.

[Megamixer]

A lot of games these days use the same art for their cover, booklet, and disc (Darksiders, Assassins Creed II, and Sonic All-Stars Racing come to mind)

Totally agreeing with the Darksiders and Sonic ASR call outs. Those manuals are crap. A shame to, since the pedigree of those games gave them a lot to work with.


I'm flipping through the manual for Brave Story, and though it has several shades of gray, I think calling it full-color would be stretching it.

I looked over the digital manual right now and while its not most attractive thing it is still more color then you'll get out of any manual from say, Sega. Right about the detail and information crammed in there. Good stuff especially for games that don't get strategy guides released for them!

[AngrySalesMonkey]

I'm flipping through the manual for Brave Story, and though it has several shades of gray, I think calling it full-color would be stretching it.
I don't see how that's possible considering that all our manuals have been in 4/4 full-color, unless it's just the design of that manual since I don't remember it off the top of my head.

Are you in Canada? If so then that's back when we used to do bilingual packaging and we had our Canadian distributor print the manuals for us since they had experience printing bilingual stuff. What they didn't tell me is that they were going to take our full-color manual files and then print them in black&white on what felt like newspaper stock. As soon as I found out about it, unfortunately it wasn't until after the launch, I made sure that full color manuals were shipped out later to all the people that purchased the game and wrote in to request a "real" manual, all at the cost of our distributor that put those god-awful manuals in there in the first place.

[Ventara]

I don't see how that's possible considering that all our manuals have been in 4/4 full-color, unless it's just the design of that manual since I don't remember it off the top of my head.

Are you in Canada? If so then that's back when we used to do bilingual packaging and we had our Canadian distributor print the manuals for us since they had experience printing bilingual stuff. What they didn't tell me is that they were going to take our full-color manual files and then print them in black&white on what felt like newspaper stock. As soon as I found out about it, unfortunately it wasn't until after the launch, I made sure that full color manuals were shipped out later to all the people that purchased the game and wrote in to request a "real" manual, all at the cost of our distributor that put those god-awful manuals in there in the first place.

Yeah, it is a Canadian copy, and wow, that's pretty awesome of you to go out of your way and make the distributor send out colour manuals. I wasn't in the know and on the internet as much as I am now a couple of years ago, so I had no idea.

The manual does feel like thick paper, but I don't find it that bad at all, and as I wrote, the amount of info put in is still a lot compared to some of my other PSP manuals.

Anyways, I really like the work you guys put into the packaging your games get (amongst other things), and I hope you guys will stay this awesome, as I'm planning to be an XSEED fan for as long as you are. I only wish Aksys and NISA would follow suit and make colour manuals