Sony has finally unveiled the PlayStation 4’s primary user interface and provided an in-depth overview of its features at its launch event in New York.

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The PS4 UI takes a more social approach to the PS3’s XMB, beginning with the login screen. At first boot-up, players are presented with a view of all of the available player accounts, which are represented by a large, high-resolution image — whether it be a picture of the player or an icon. If you’re the sole user, you can configure the system to boot directly to the main interface, of course, but they’re giving multi-user systems a better gateway. For those that purchase the PlayStation Camera, the system also supports facial recognition. Players will go through a one-time calibration wherein the system snaps multiple views of your face for streamlined identification. In order to eliminate false or unintended logins, the system also requires players to raise the DualShock 4 into view as an added security layer. The PS4 also introduces guest accounts, which allow friends to create a temporary user account on the system that erases itself after they sign out.

Like the XMB, the PS4 presents all of the core categories of the system in a horizontal linear view, including a new “What’s New” tab, which acts a news feed for all of your friends’ latest activities, like status updates, in-game screenshots, and captured video clips. It’s thumbnail heavy and makes for a more visually interesting experience. You can jump directly into clips with virtually no delay, barring slow connection speeds or other network instability.

Speed is the most noticeable improvement with the PS4 OS. Whether you’re checking out a video, loading the browser, or opening up a party chat, the system loads each function almost instantaneously. Games, on the other hand, are expectedly slower to load given the large file sizes. The home button on the DualShock 4 not only provides a shortcut back to the dashboard, but can also be used for multitasking, moving swiftly between your two most recent apps. Whether you’re playing a game and want to refer to a guide on IGN from the integrated browser, just double tap the home button and it will bring you back and forth between the app and your game.

The party and messaging systems have been completely overhauled and drastically expanded with support for cross-platform, realtime text, picture, and audio communication amongst your friends. Parties can include up to eight players and span all aspects of the system. Most importantly, messaging and chat is cross-platform, allowing players to communicate across PS4, PS Vita, and any smartphone or tablet compatible with the PlayStation app. On the PS4, players can craft messages the old fashioned way by navigating the on-screen keyboard with thumbsticks or using the DualShock 4’s built-in motion sensors to move a cursor around the screen.

Trophy hounds will be pleased to discover that Sony has created an additional metric for satisfying and brandishing their completionist urges. In addition to the bronze, silver, gold, and platinum-calibur ranks, each trophy will be dynamically assigned a rarity level, which is determined by how many users have acquired it — ranging from common, rare, very rare, and ultra rare. For example, if a platinum trophy for a certain title has only been acquired by a small fraction of the total userbase, it will be designated as ultra rare.

As previously announced, the PS4 will allow for a friends list of up to 2,000 friends and enable players to share and identify themselves by their real names. But instead of just automatically showing your name to anyone you add to your friends list, players must take an additional step to approve a player to see their real name.

Sony also provided a deeper look at its video capture and streaming tools, which includes integrated broadcasting for Twitch and UStream. In the past, prospective broadcasters would be dependent on external hardware or in-game support on a title-by-title basis, but now with the PS4, you can set up a stream with high-fidelity video and picture-in-picture via the PlayStation Camera on an OS level. While not as feature-rich as some of the current third-party solutions, PS4 owners can dictate stream quality and control the format of their broadcast. For those that prefer to watch other streams, the OS also features an integrated Twitch browser, which showcases live, ongoing streams for fullscreen viewing and enables players to search for specific users. Favorites or other such channel shortcuts aren’t supported at launch, but may be added in the future.

The system also records the last 15 minutes of gameplay at all times, which can be edited into smaller clips and syndicated to Facebook or Twitter, as well as to your PS4 friends’ news feeds. Users can even determine specific distribution lists and privacy settings within Facebook, making the content visible only by certain people on Facebook. Sadly, captured clips can only be shared from within the PS4 OS and the raw footage can’t be exported to a USB HDD or thumb drive, though Sony says it is considering adding the future at a later date.

As for the PSN Store, Sony has once again adopted a rather image-heavy design. On day one, every game and every piece of content you can buy in-store can be purchased digitally through the PSN. You can buy and download full games or you can redeem Sony’s promotional pricing for current- to next-gen title upgrades. If you bought Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag on PS3 and it came with the next-gen upgrade voucher, you can enter the code and get the reduced $9.99 pricing. More importantly, for select titles, you can choose to prioritize the download of certain modes or content so you can start playing faster. In our demo, Sony used Call of Duty: Ghosts as an example, which enables players to download the multiplayer suite first and the singleplayer campaign later.

Movies and media has now been moved entirely to the cloud, so users will no longer have to wait for a movie to download and take up precious hard drive space whenever they make a rental or purchase through the PSN.Finally, players can configure the system to download pertinent updates while in standby mode and be powered on remotely, which allows players to make purchases on the PSN via a browser or the PlayStation app from anywhere in the world and remotely turn their home system on and begin preloading a game.But alas, this was just a brief overview of the PS4’s new UI and there’s still plenty more for us to dig into, so stay tuned to IGN for more in-depth content and our upcoming hardware review.

Scott Lowe is IGN's resident tech expert and first-person shooter fanatic. You can follow him on Twitter at @ScottLowe and on MyIGN at Scott-IGN