They're just responding to the much more vocal "tree hugger" community which has asked why something the size of a CD requires packaging large enough for a Mini Cooper. The huge amount of paper/plastic waste makes them look bad.....

Actually, you can blame retailers and their ever-shrinking game shelves for this one.

Fooling the consumer into thinking they are getting more by oversized packaging apparently still works.

everyone is getting cheap... don't expect it to change anytime soon.

Eg: 'Big' Mac

Shelf space at retail outlets cost money.  Less space, more profit.

Personally, I don't want the big boxes, they always drove me nuts.  A slim DVD case works just great for me, it's easier to store as it saves space for me as well, not just the retailer.

I think this trend is great! I hate to disagree, but I have so little space at home that I always threw away the bigger boxes. Back before they were book-sized they were, indeed, impossible to manage, so I always had to find space for both the manual and the CD case.

Then came the smaller book-sized ones. Though still cardboard boxes, they weren't as impractical to fit into a shelf as trophies. As the boxes (I'm not sure if they've all undergone this change) turned into DVD containers, still book-sized, it was considerably more incentive to keep everything and display; besides, here was a home not only for the CD but also the manual. A change to DVD cases was even better - less space taken up.

Now, only recently, my brother and I got RA3 premier, and, as the OP said, it's pretty small. But it's metal, contains a fair bit of paper and three CDs. Not a cubic centimetre of space is wasted => pretty much perfect economy of space.

Besides which, the psychological impact of buying a huge box and finding a single CD and a small, thin manual inside is pretty damaging. "For all this space," you'd think, "they'd at least try to justify it." That's how I used to feel; cheated of the amount of space I bought, if only subconciously.

Indeed, the largest box I bought in the last year was the WiC collector's edition, which is about the size of a really heavy-duty Raymond E. Feist novel. And, man, THAT was justified. The original CD, a "recruit your friends" CD, a "making of" CD, a Modern Marvels CD about the Berlin Wall (one where, for some reason, the German interviewees spoke at exactly the same volume as the interpreters, so it became a rather interesting challenge to make any sense from them), an actual piece of the Berlin Wall, along with a cute little certificate, and, of course, the manual. On top of all this, the box is made out of some sort of really heavy card, and covered in fabric. I mean, I got what I paid for, there. That box is pretty much packed.

In fact, had the box been bigger, I might have again felt, though perhaps to a lesser degree, that feeling of being cheated for my space. I'm happy that they keep the boxes as small as they can be. It saves space, and the space it does take up is utilized so much more efficiently that I feel, paradoxically, as if I've got more for my money.

Apologies for the rant

I think the OP was referring particulary to the Collector Editions. Meaning there should be many more things besides a cd case and a manual.

I think there is a formula to compute the correlation between displaying toys and how often you get laid.

Hm. I guess it is just me.

For what it's worth, I'm not entirely convinced this is strictly a retail space issue. Two of the games I mentioned (Fallout and Spore) have not only strategy guides but "collector's edition" strategy guides for sale separately. I know for a fact that Spore has a super-skimpy manual. I think it's partly a marketing issue (milking the cow).

Publishing in bound paper format costs money, plus the additional shipping and packaging costs. Much cheaper to have manuals in PDF format.

Sarissi,

I understand that; it's a pretty straightforward concept in fact. But the reality is that it used to be that you could take for granted that when you bought a game you could expect at least a token printed manual unless you were buying a "jewel case" copy from a big-box retailer.

I like game manuals and I read them. But I don't enjoy scrolling through pdf files nearly as much as I do reading an actual printed document. Yes, I could print a pdf at home, but that's not really the point, is it? There's cheap and then there's ridiculously cheap and I think that this type of scenario falls firmly in the latter camp.

It appears that I'm in the minority, but I find it disheartening and annoying that the trend to publishing games is going in the direction of the least amount of possible anything. Probably the only reason software isn't being sold in paper sleeves is that they wouldn't hold up well in shipping or they might be too easy to steal. Then again, I guess we'll eventually be buying all of software from Impulse, Steam, Direct2drive and other platforms and the tiny amount of shelf space currently allocated to PC games will vanish completely. That's another trend I don't like.

I don't have anything against digital distribution in principle, but you know what? I'd rather buy a physical copy of The Witcher Enhanced Edition and get paper books and a soundtrack CD that I can stick in my car's CD player if I choose to do so as opposed to a digital download that nets me some MP3 and pdf downloads. I guess it's just a personal preference, but I feel like I'm paying x amount of money precisely so that I don't have to burn my own CDs or print my own manual.