Sakurai cut Dolby Surround audio from Kirby Air Ride to avoid making players wait on the logo screen

Kirby Air Ride almost supported Dolby Surround audio. That’s according to Masahiro Sakurai, the game’s director.

Sakurai was speaking about the game during a live stream with Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya. The two participated in a live discussion event hosted by Hamster Corporation. Sakurai’s comments came about while discussing how he’d like publishers to improve the waiting time before each game begins.

Sakurai noted how with his own games, he makes it so players can “reduce waiting time to a minimum by mashing the A button.” With this type of concept being very important to him, Dolby Surround audio was abandoned for Kirby Air Ride since players would have been required to sit through the logo screen for over one second.

Sakurai stated the following, as translated by Automaton:

“I feel very sorry for making the user wait. If you take one second from each user, that means you’ll be taking 10,000 seconds from 10,000 people. The more this repeats over the years, the more time you will cause players to lose.”

How do you feel about Sakurai’s comments? Are you bothered sitting through logo screens that take a few seconds to go through? Let us know in the comments.