Loading screens for loading screens?

[VideoGameCritic]

One thing that's bummed me out about each generation of consoles is the increasingly long load times.  I really thought the Xbox 360 load times sucked - until I played a PS3. 

I was showing off Motor Storm to a friend the other day, and it was almost embarrasing how long we had to wait to get started.  Pretty soon they're going to have to start incorporating loading screens for loading screens!

By comparison, starting up a game in the Atari 2600 console (30 year old technology by the way) takes what?  .0001 seconds?  Yeah I know it's a cartridge but even some cartridges have load times when they need to decompress data (the Jaguar comes to mind).

If things keep going this way, by 2015 it will take about 8 hours to load a game.  The good news is, you can turn on your PS4 before you go to bed and the game will almost be ready to play by the time you wake up.

[Varian]

How about playing Atari 2600 type games on loading screens while you wait? Too bad Namco has the patents on that.

[JustLikeHeaven1]

Yea the 360 and PS3 have sucky ass load times.  I haven't noticed it so much on the PS3 (then again I only own 2 games), but the times suck regardless. 

The Wii on the otherhand loads very quickly.  The downside is that there are probably more in-game load screens that you have to worry about...a limitation to the technology I presume.

You have to take the good with the bad I suppose.

[Alienblue]

Actually, Critic, ...did you have a COMPUTER back in the early 80's? Tape Cassete games could take as long as FIFTEEN MINUTES or more to load, and 9 times out of ten you would get a "Read error!"...discs were only a bit better, with load times of several minutes on some games. You can't really compare old 4-16K atari 2600 carts to huge MEGABIT carts that have load screens. Of COURSE a 4K game will load immidiately!

I believe that within a decade Load Screens will be a thing of the past...computers and games first get bigger and better, then the processor speed catches up..but by 2017, I believe you will insert the media, press a button and in no more than 3 seconds the game will be up (of course you still may have to wade through Title and opening screens-and commercials for Cool Cola!)

[Steerforth]

Of course the answer is BIGGER processors, MORE memory, and perhaps 5 or 10 lasors working in sync to pull all of the data off of multiple discs.  Also your game machine will need to plug in the same style outlet as your clothes dryer, and it will need its own electrical breaker commited to it.

[bluemonkey1]

Call of Duty 2 has no load time to respawn when you die. 
Gears of War allows you to play for over an hour without seeing a load screen.
Oblivion loads massive outdoor areas on the fly again no load screen.

Are people forgetting the 15second load time on many games back in the 32 bit era?

[VideoGameCritic]

[QUOTE=Alienblue]Actually, Critic, ...did you have a COMPUTER back in the early 80's? Tape Cassete games could take as long as FIFTEEN MINUTES or more to load, and 9 times out of ten you would get a "Read error!"...discs were only a bit better, with load times of several minutes on some games. You can't really compare old 4-16K atari 2600 carts to huge MEGABIT carts that have load screens. Of COURSE a 4K game will load immidiately!

[/QUOTE]

Yes I am familar with the old tape-loading games, but that was a computer (in my case, and Atari 1200XL).  The main reason I got back into consoles was so I didn't have to put up with that crap.  Unfortunately, in recent years consoles have been moving towards the "PC" model, which is not good.  On the bright side, the Wii and DS promise to bring back the "instant gratification" brand of fun ushered in by the early consoles.

[Conn]

[QUOTE=bluemonkey]Are people forgetting the 15second load time on many games back in the 32 bit era? [/QUOTE]

The point is that by last-gen, games had loading screens between 1 and 5 seconds. Now we're getting LONGER load times in the next-gen.

[bluemonkey1]

Of course we are getting longer load times sometimes.  I would have thought that was obvious.  The increase in the size of data required has increased at a far greater factor than the speed of disc drives.  You understand that different components of a system affect different factors of the game.  Doing intelligent streaming helps and of course having the large memory helps but the next gen consoles are still hampered by the speed of disc drives.  That's a physical limitation they can do nothing about.  Games like Gears though demonstrate how a longer initial load can prevent frequent loads.

[voor]

can someone please explain what is actually going on when something is being loaded??