One of the many good things Nintendo did with the GameCube was to mitigate load times. Nearly all of their first party and many 3rd party games had little to none. That’s always been a staple for me while playing video games; no waiting to play. Call me a purist or whatever.
It’s interesting that the recent Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land commercial makes note of this. The commercial, if you haven’t seen it, show’s good ‘ole Tony tearing up the streets only to crash into a giant superimposed load screen. He then says “this has gotta stop.” It stopped years ago (for the most part) on the Cube with EA being the big exception.
Will load times get longer during this next round of consoles? Will Nintendo stick with their “minimal if any” load time stance as they have with the beloved GameCube? Here’s hoping they (—– now loading…) do.
Fuzz
Ya, load times suck. I remeber Midnight Club for the PS2. You could go to the bathroom and grab a coffee before that had loaded each level. It was one of my first experiences with the PS2, and one of the reasons I stayed away from it.
One thing I liked that Retro did with Metroid was to have a seamless atmosphere. The only problem was somtimes you thought somthing was broken when you tried to open a door, and it wouldn’t open until the next room was loaded.
Anonymous
let’s talk about “the urbz.” the load times in that game were always at least 2 minutes. it really made the game a horrible experience. that among other things.
Anonymous
is THAT why the doors didn’t always open right away!?!?! I honestly had no idea
Babble
I HATE LOADING TIMES.
It’s the main reason I almost never played my PS2 and XBox (the XBox is way better than the PS2 in this department, but even so…).
Same thing for the PSP, I’m staying far away from it just because of all the laoding time I heard about.
This, for me, is more important than next-gen graphics. It goes right after gameplay. And to answer your question Blake, YES load times will get longer during the next round on everything except Nintendo (I hope). Unless people start complaining a lot more, and then MS will turn around, hype/push this and say “See, we MS have the best loading time in the industry, aren’t we the best, blablablablabla”.
vakerorokero
But It has got to a point that is just silly and maybe they just doit for doing it!! don’t believe me? I modded an xbox so I could play my games of the hard drive just to avoid this problem, and what do you know, Tiger Woods 06 takes over 15 still to load!! the same time it did from the dvd!?! what’s going on?? what is it loading? blurry textures? a custom profile character? processing? what? can’t wait for the games to start coming in flash cards, because I somehow get a feeling that Blueray are going to have the same problem…
anomaly
Geist had terrible load times, but I consider it to be a previous-gen game, so it doesn’t count. Seriously.
Anonymous
I agree with babble, load time is second only to game play. I tried to play a coworkers PSP, and I had to wait to play a level! Ridiculous! He claimed this allowed high quality music and textures, well good for him, I’ll play three levels before his first loads. And isn’t load time the reason the N64 stuck to carts? Kids are impatient, they get bored, and so do I. … whoa sorry. < /rant>
Sturek
Yeah loading sucks…but being a PC game I’m pretty used to it.
So when I finally came back to consoles with the DS, it was so nice. Uninterrupted and no wait for anything to load.
Sims 2 is driving me crazy…takes a couple of minutes before I can just select the family…and then a couple of minutes again…
Imho carts are great. I’d be willing to pay a LOT more for a game without loading…
mo
That the GC had no noticeable loading screens whatsoever with ‘just’ 40MB of ram AND without a hard drive is a testament to the intelligent and creative might of the Kyoto giant’s software and hardware teams. They understand gameplay better than anyone else.
And yes, Nintendo DID say that Rev will have quick start-up and load times. Which is A further testament to Nintendo’s far-sighted vision of making the gameplaying experience completely seamless and therefore more enjoyable and accessible for all.
Hooray for Nintendo!
Matt
Are we that impatient with our games that if they dont load with seconds they are not worth playing?
Rollin
They definitely will.
Rollin
..Keep them minimal i meant.
Rollin
I don’t think i could choose no load times over graphics or vice versa. It’s all important to me. And this gameplay over graphics thing is getting ridiculous.
Anonymous
Yeah graphics don’t matter ONLY if they are not hurting the gameplay by their lack of quality. :s
Rollin
A killer game needs everything in spades to impress. RE4 wouldn’t have been so lauded had it looked like Cubivore and played like WarioWare.