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.