We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I don’t know the expense of printing, but there must have been a significant shipping cost to all that paper.

I could tell you the explanations I’ve heard around, though: “nobody” (a technical term for “not enough people”) read manuals, even back when they were the norm. People tended to use the manual when they got stuck, rather than use it to get started. And even so, people tended to ask someone else before reading the manual. So why write much of a manual at all, if what people really want is a strategy guide?

That, along with other trends (such as the decreasing cost of producing the game media in an increasingly risk-averse industry) is what stopped them from printing good manuals and shipping them in the box. These days you might be lucky to get a link to a PDF on Steam.

I am not sure that the gaming illiteracy problem can be attributed to lack of manuals; it seems to be the other way around.