My thoughts exactly. Having two and a half pages of empty green before the article seems like pointless insanity to me.
I think you two must be using an older browser that doesn't support SVG properly. The green area contains an animated wireframe of an Xbox One.
No, it started animating just fine. But only after about 5 seconds where it only showed a green page while loading. Which is irritating and lets you think that something is broken.
Sorry, this is the web, I don't need a fucking splash screen. At least make it so that I immediately notice that the content is there.