karsten's videogaming talks Vol.3: “The Old Videogaming feel"

Good thoughts on loading times and intro. screens. As someone notes, all people want to get recognized these days. However, this has always been true, since the time of Babylon. I think the real issue is that they all want 'front page' space when there is only so much room. Personally, if this is the case, then I think it best that they should just have one or two screens with a couple of names on each screen. If you want more names, then fit more on the screen. This is what logos are for! and people recognize logos just as well, if not better than some long-ass, silly company demo.

Next, as others have said, most of this began when CDs and disc media entered the gaming market. The N64 picked this up from Sony and Sega. Did you notice how before almost no cartridges had this crazy amount of start-up sequences?

It's hard to say, but I almost feel like much of today's loading screens and credits and the result of the old 90s to early 00s days when loading times were an issue. (Notice were?) It has been shown time again that these days loading times do not have to be anywhere near what they once were, yet companies are implementing additional screens as though they were. They are either a) entirely aware of this and taking advantage of the younger consumers' being used to this to promote their companies more, or b) entirely unaware and are simply doing these things out of silly and unreflected habit. (Yes, there is a c) that they are aware but too lazy to do anything.) Nevertheless, irregardless of the fact that I believe that some current gen. games genuinely do require extra loading time, most no longer do.

As pointed out above, much of this trend began with disc media. Thus, I am genuinely excited about what will happen when, as Karsten eluded, we begin possibly moving back to solid state media. Will the trend reverse? Well, hopefully we will not need such a trend to get companies to be reasonable to begin with, as they should be doing so with such a trend anyways. With the recent advent and increasing popularity of SSDs, I look forward to seeing what the future will hold.

 

some thoughts on the topic;

Back when the optical media was new to console gaming, the price of higher speed drives were the main issue behind load times. Everyone wanted to use the optical drives, but it was too expensive to even put a 4x drive into the Saturn and PS1. If I remember correctly those two consoles would have had to be priced at over $700 if they had used 4x drives.

Fast forward to the past few generations of hardware. Sony for example places new tech drives (DVD, Blu-Ray) into their consoles regardless of price passed on to consumers. So instead of load times to save you some cash when purchasing the console, you pay more and still wait. Certain games are going to push one hardware envelope or another. However in my opinion hardware isn't the issue anymore.

 

I can't wait until we get to the point where hardware and space limits aren't an issue and where graphics aren't going to get any better. Better gameplay all round one would hope.