It looks like an improvement. And as long as you aren’t actually using it, it is.

Mindful of its prior issues updating the functionality of Xbox 360, Microsoft has elected to make almost every system function an app. This might make more sense from a development point of view, enabling more rapid updates – and for Microsoft’s sake, let’s hope so – but Xbox One’s debut user experience is stuttering, clunky, and a serious challenge to Xbox Live’s long-held status as the premier console service. Bluntly, they take too long to load, don’t offer the functionality that Xbox Live was built on, and are, inexplicably, badly handled by the OS.

This shambling, zomboid clunkiness permeates the entire interface. You have to go into the Games & Apps list to view downloads. Missed game invitations aren’t stored, but lost forever. You can’t view or manage storage, a spectacularly poor decision given that the 500GB hard drive will be approaching capacity by March. The overall sense is of a design handed over to the team behind the similarly unloved Windows 8 interface, rather than anybody who has used an Xbox 360 regularly or had any familiarity with its strengths.

Beyond Sony’s superior early sales figures, you can see it play out on social media as people tentatively sign up to PSN for the first time, after years of Xbox Live. Once there, they start sharing: screenshots and Twitch footage is how games and platforms are marketed in this new generation, and Microsoft has launched with no easy way to do either.