I honestly just don’t get the point of these screens.

It lets the game see which controller or input method you are using. This screen was (and maybe still is? I'm not sure.) a requirement for certification on consoles going back to the Xbox 360, when wireless controllers became ubiquitous.

Having to press a single button at the start of a game is a pretty minor complaint.

Of all the things to complain about. You must have a very stress free life.

I got curious myself and agreed, so I went looking.

A lot of sources specified that it was part of a technical requirements checklist, and...

Yeap. It doesn't explicitly require a "press any key" screen, but it gives a more pleasant screen to look at while you select a user. People online also say it's used to detect which controller is in use.

If you add a feature like this to a game, it becomes harder to maintain if there are discrepancies between builds. So presumably it's usually just left in rather than removed.

It annoys me when you close down a game, and it only has the option to send you to the title menu instead of closing out. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's kind of annoying when you need to go, and you have to "quit" the game just to wait for it to go back to the title screen and make you hit "quit" again a second time.

So it knows what input device you're using

Bro if this is what bothers you, then I wish I had such an easy life as you

There was (is?) a requirement from Sony and Microsoft about how long a game can take to load as part of the game licensing process. One of the ways it is measured is by counting time from game boot to how quickly the game can react to user's keypress. A "press start to continue" screen is the most simple thing you can load that passes this requirement. After that the game can do heavier operations such as loading save data, checking DLC or pulling latest messages from online server without having to worry too much about how long these operations take.

The best thing a game has ever done with this is ask on first startup if it should go to the main menu or just load your last save on every startup after this one.

I'm reminded of something that Binding of Isaac does that I wish more games would do: If you're anywhere in the main menu (even drilled into it), if you just mash the B button/Esc key, it will keep backing out, up to and including exiting the game if you press it on the main menu. I hate games that make me click 3 times and say "are you sure??" when I just want to quit the dang program.

I get your point. And kind of agree for the most part. But idk, some title screens are nice to look at. Having the option to just view it until I'm ready to go on is nice imo. One button press isn't all that bad. But yeah when loading or dlc checking has to be done after pressing the button it's more annoying. That should happen before imo

Some games, like the Pathfinder games by Owlcat, use that initial input to determine if you are playing with mouse/keyboard or a gamepad. Depending on that, you get presented with a different UI in the main menu.

Another reason for such a screen could also be Xbox support. Nowadays it's no longer necessary, because user-handling has been vastly improved with the GDK, but before the GDK was released a splash screen was the most user-friendly way to do user-handling in a single-player or online-multiplayer game on Xbox.

Games used to take a looong time to load before flash storage, so people would go get a coffee or something while loading. Before main menus, it would just drop you into the game while you were away, potentiality missing something. So they added the "press any key" pause to wait until you're back.

For some reason they kept this until today.

At some point in this millenium, it became ubiquitous in games to ask for a button press before switching to the main menu and it has become a pet peeve off mine.

Fake news. It was common in the previous millenium too

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pI0fJMkYdPU/maxresdefault.jpg

It's been bugging me in BG3. Mostly because it takes a while to load and when it's finally loaded, I have to press a button then WAIT AGAIN for a stupid animation before getting to the main menu so I can then load some more.

Gimme a command line to just automatically "Continue" please. The pretty animtions and menu were fun at first. Now I just want to get back to my brain parasites as quickly as possible. I'm sure that has nothing to do with my brain parasites.

Lately, I’ve seen it for controller detection on PC games. Larian games like Baldur’s Gate 3 at least use it to change how they render the “Main” menu. I mean, the “Main” menu also changes if I plug in a controller so maybe it’s just an aesthetic thing held over from older video games.

Cyberpunk 2077 is terrible for this. Have to push the spacebar three times to get to the menu to start/continue a game.

The only thing I don't like about Deep Rock Galactic is having to watch both the publishers, and the studios logo sequences every time I start the game.

There are usually ways around this in the config files. That's how I've always fixed it.

Bonus negative points for games that only check DLC after that button press

Don't forget games that have you manually press button to dismiss and unlocked DLC.

It's very fun with games that you buy after few years and have hundred DLC (ex. fighting games) 😅

Usually takes few minutes of just button pressing to dismiss all new dlcs

I have a similar issue with Diablo 4 at the moment. I've been playing on controller on pc. It's two button presses to skip the intro logos, and a third press will exit the game before even getting to the main menu. The number of times I've accidentally closed the game is much too high.

I finished Assassin's Creed Valhalla recently and it drove me up the wall all the time. I mean well over 100 h playtime.

And the game would sit there after every start and wait for me to "press any key". And only after a keypress it would start checking for Add-ons which took ages. Why couldn't it have done that already?

Plus the intro videos I had to replace with empty files because no-skip.

Annoying!