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....
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.
I don't want to "Press any key to continue" to the main menu
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....