Unskippable game intro waffle.

[Profit]

Devs should consolidate all their logos onto one loading screen. It's not uncommon to get a sequence of:

PUBLISHER ==> DEVELOPER ==> MIDDLEWARE

I think sometimes developers are contractually bound to display the Havoc or Criware/ADX logo.

Most of the time, it's just too tempting to include your own company logo.

Sony did well in removing the PS3 startup logo - they should do the same on PSP.

[Ragnar004]

But I must admit this is something that bugs me in any game. Who honestly wants to sit through company logos? It's a complete indulgence on the part of those responsible and to make them unskippable actually tells me that the companies I'm looking at don't actually have my best interests at heart. If they did, they'd let me get to the game as quickly as possible.

Amen. Bungie is a killer at this on Halo 2 when every single time you boot it up it shows the game title, then "Microsoft Game studios," then "Bungie," then the unavoidable "Game experience may change during online play." Thankyou for pointing this out Bungie and all other game studios, I could never have found out on my own. Fortunately I am reminded every time I turn Halo back on . THQ did a bad one on Dawn of War 2 where even though you could skip the company logos, you have to push escape about 8 times before you get to the loading screen because they are supported by oh so many people who all need a mention...

That was slightly off topic. No games spring to mind with really long unavoidable intros, only games with really good unavoidable intros like Mario Power Tennis . In-game cutscene avoidance is another matter on all Paper Mario games when you are fighting the last boss and it shows you every single place you went to being affected by this event and if you lose to this boss, you have to watch it again. Infuriating.

[J0e Musashi]

JPN games have less intro screenage in my experience. Another reason not to get your games from GAME.

[endo]

KoF XII is a real pain in the dick for this, and they're not even intro/game-related screens, it's all the logos for the tech used in the game and there's bleedin' loads of them, all unskippable too. Then again, once you actually get to play the game it seems SNKP is trying to get on your tits on purpose with the ridiculous loading screens.

[Brad]

Okami.

First time I played it I had no memory card. It takes in excess of 30 minutes of story before you can play the game and actually save. So, I had to sit through that 30+ minute story twice, two nights running.

[Number45]

Okami earned forgiveness from me over the next 35 or so hours. If the game had been bad, I don't think I'd have ever forgiven it.

[Flabio]

Of course, quite a few games actually *are* loading while they play those publisher and middleware logos. The console manufacturers don't allow you to ever have a static screen with no indication that something is happening. So all skipping the logos would get you is a screen with a spinning 'now loading' logo.

Of course, a game shouldn't need a long load to reach it's front end, but that's a whole other discussion.