And is it more of an annoyance than anything?
I reckon it is to (a) give the player a chance to admire your beautiful title screen, and/or (b) make sure theyāre actually ready (and have not, for example, gone off to get a cup off coffee while the game is loading) before you start throwing hellfuls of bullets at them.
Iām pretty sure that reason (c) āletās annoy the player!ā has never been a designerās reason for doing it. 
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Sorry this is what I meant:
It goes like this:
Splash Screen
Title Screen (Press Key to Start)
Menu Screen (Player can then select from Settings, Play, Multiplayer, etc.)
Is it really necessary? I mean, even if the player went to get a cup of coffee so what?
Itās something that is traditionally required by console manufacturers. Iāve heard some reasons for it, but Iāve never heard one that actually seemed like a solid and clear reason.
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Very often is appears after a loading screen/progress bar. Itās always a good idea to err on the side of letting the player control moreāso this prevents the game from starting unless the player says so.
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Yeah, though I guess if itās just between the title screen and the main menu screen, then no, there isnāt much point in it (except to let people admire the beautiful title screen).
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Personally I think it can be kind of artsy when itās done well. I think of how Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door used it or I think Zelda 64. Seems like a stylistic thing rather than a practical thing.
I guess this originated from title screens that were a little more than title screens (arcade but also 8bit). They used to be rotating and have besides a game image also game info/instructions, game preview and Highscore screen. You wanted to control when this disappearsā¦
Arcade also a mechanism for 2 players to āget readyā
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You see this most in arcades and on consoles.
In the arcades it lets you game run a continual advertisement when not in use, and at the same time allows players to interupt quickly when they want to play.
In consoles itās all about providing a consistent user experience. Every console game behaves the same, which makes it much easier to grab a new game.
On PC the main reason is to duplicate the arcade or console feel. Just make sure if you are going to flash an arcade style āpress fire to beginā that you also obviously indicate which key fire is.
Note that there is another similar āpress start to beginā at the end of many loading screens. This is because loading can take a while. If the player decides to run off to the bathroom or whatever during the loading sequence, you donāt want to start without them. This is especially true for games that are one sensitive. It would suck to leave during a long loading scene, only to come back and be dead and have to do the long loading scene again.
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A few of the older Assassinās Creed games, as well as a few Final Fantasy games (and others Iām sure), had teaser videos, occasionally promotional trailers shown before release, which would play if you waited on the title screen. I distinctly recall Assassinās Creed 2 doing this. It was kind of nice.
Title screen will often have beautiful stills, movies and gameplay samples (particularly in arcade games). This would be distracting on the menu screen which is often quite busy and requires players to read options, etc.
It also gives the game time to load resources in the background.
Games that support multiple input devices can use the āpress to startā screen to determine what input configuration to use. If the player presses a keyboard key, use the key + mouse config. If the player presses a joystick button, use the joystick config.
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Of course, the best games do it automatically. And the super best games can do both (types of input) at once!
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Having a working title on console, I can tell you why these exist: its a requirement from the console manufacturer and itās there for a purpose.
If youāre game does anything related to network accounts (PSN or Live) or save, by āpressing a buttonā the player actually raises all the events that are meant to play the game. If one player doesnāt have a console network account, thatās where you detect it and are asked by the console manufacturer to apply whatever it is required to do. Same goes with āsavesā.
That is there to provide a user experience consistency over all games: this way, one player knows that if he gets an error message because the game asks for whatever feature requiring a network account, heāll be informed he canāt play with this feature without signing on with his network account or get one if that is not already the case.
PC games have these because it is easier to maintain a similar flow for PC and Console builds from a development perspective. Having a different introduction flow between platforms introduces additional costs as well as conditional bugsā¦
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I knew this had to be the reason, and not ājust becauseā. Thanks for confirming!
It is a kind of āattract mode,ā much like what was present in arcades.
One of the primary purposes of this mode is actually to serve as a screen saver, not simply to āattract.ā This was part of the original purpose of the classic arcades as well, though they didnāt advertise this fact. Screen burn-in has always been an issue. Itās less of an issue these days, but it is still something that designers need to consider. The āpush button to startā screen helps to alleviate this.
Have you noticed that these screens will frequently have some manner of scene or animation playing in the background? Or that the āpush button to startā text on the screen frequently fades in and out, rather than just staying static? All of this is to serve as a screen saver. Having the colors and visuals of the scene be constantly changing, even if only a little bit, keeps the pixels on the screen shifting constantly. This prevents any one color or image from getting burned into the screen. Static text and GUI elements are one of the most common problems for this sort of thing, which is why the button prompt frequently fades in and out. And all of this is why you donāt just jump to the menu immediately, and why you often shift back to this mode from the menu if you donāt do anything for a certain length of time. The game is essentially providing you with a screen saver, so that your screen of choice doesnāt get the gameās menu text permanently burned into it.
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It also helps you identify controllers and players.
This is a slightly more modern development, as personal user profiles werenāt really a thing on most past consoles, but yes, it is also very useful for those purposes.