4 ms·
Kind of related, the reason there's a "Press A to play game" on xbox (and a lot of PC ports) is because Microsoft requires a button press every x seconds, and i
by chipperyman573 10y ago
Kind of related, the reason there's a "Press A to play game" on xbox (and a lot of PC ports) is because Microsoft requires a button press every x seconds, and if the game takes too long to load before the menu appears, pressing A will circumvent that requirement.
- matheusmoreira 10y ago>Microsoft requires a button press every x seconds What is the rationale behind such a requirement? >if the game takes too long to load before the menu appears, pressing A will circumvent that requirement. Does this mean those screens/videos that get displayed after the game starts and before the menu appears are required by Microsoft to be skippable? If that's the case then it's good UX design in my opinion. I think those things are an unacceptable waste of player's time; I hate them so much I rename the files in the game's directory so it will fail to show them.
- jamesgeck0 10y agoIt doesn't mean they have to be skippable, just that they can't drag on too long.
- hawkice 10y agoPresumably so they can see how long it takes to handle input events, because that's a good proxy for whether the application is responsive or not. What they don't want is the game freezing. But that's harder to measure directly.
- frik 10y agoN64 had press Start to start, years before XBox was even a thing. And yes, many/most PC ports are of very low quality. Gone are the days of PC-first Triple-A games with forgotten features like Quick-save/load, LAN-multiplayer, Map-editor, official Mod-support. These days, these ports feel like they started porting two months before release, done by two coders. All these console-ish things like messages "don't turn off your system" (yah-right), press a key to start (yup), save-points (wtf), always-on single player (...)
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoThe N64 in turn took the start screen thing from the Super Famicom and Famicom before it. I assume title screens are just that: title screens, and the developers want to show off. Maybe it's a legacy of arcade machines, though.
- frik 10y agoPC games never had a title screens, until the first bad console ports around 2003 came along. Instead of a title screen, PC games used to go to the main menu directly. Even today, some console games like GTA V don't have a title screen, but many smaller games feature a useless title screen.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoWhat about DOOM (1992)? That had a title screen of sorts.
- jamesgeck0 10y agoTons of PC games have had title screens going way back. Ultima IV (1985) and Commander Keen (1990) spring to mind.
- abritinthebay 10y agoMy copy of Alley Cat from 1983 disagrees with you.
- jamesgeck0 10y agoThe other reason behind "Press A to play" is that a console can have several controllers associated with it. Pressing a button at the title lets the game know which controller the user is holding.
- chipperyman573 10y agoWouldn't it be P1/2/3/4?
- chongli 10y agoOnly in the case of wired controllers.