The answer to the topic question is simple, 95% of the time it's due to shitty game design.
For instance, I played Black for the first time the other day, the opening sequence took forever.
And what was this opening sequence comprised of, Final Fantasy quality CG, a long intro? Nope, it was just a (really) slow changing white text on the bottom left corner of a black screen with an obnoxious "heroic" orchestral tune in the background... Then came a shitty live action intro, which was unskippable as well, like all the other cinematics in the game, and once the oh so captivating video stopped, a load screen kicked in, just to load the menu.
As a side note, Criterion guys are geniuses when it comes to coding a renderer and toolchains, but they really could use some help on the user interface side. All the Burnout games had stupid user interfaces (especially the way the games handled game saves), Black is no exception.
