Well avid readers, I’ve only gone and done it.  No turning back now…

First impressions?  Well I managed to get hold of the fabled ‘day one’ edition of the XBOX ONE, which for no other reason than the pure fun of it, comes with a limited edition day one controller, and you also get a day one achievement.  Add to this Forza Motor Sport 5 as a free download … and I’d say I got a pretty good deal.

Having spent the evening and part of the morning playing around with it … I am amazed just how much fun the hyped Kinect sensor is … I actually now couldn’t imagine the console without it and its voice commands, gestures etc. all work very well indeed, after a moderate learning curve.  It never gets boring telling the XBOX to switch to things, to pause Netflix, to record gameplay, to turn off and on – and it’s just so quick and fluid.  So yes a hearty recommendation there for Kinect from me.

The machine itself in operation is very quiet, although a little louder when a disk is playing.  But all very smooth – and this smoothness translates into gameplay, which seemed noticeably silkier than on say, the XBOX 360 or PS3 – maybe it’s that 60 frames per second thing.  Of the games I have played, I am currently enjoying Battlfield 4 – graphics are not a night and day leap from last generation, but very crisp and detailed with plenty of flashy effects – a good example of starting blocks for the power of XBOX ONE, which will reveal itself even more with future releases.  Killer Instinct which can be downloaded as a free demo is also fun, fast and very Street Fighter IV.

This is all very early days with the console … I have yet to quite get the hang of the game dvr functionality, and some apps like BBC iPlayer and Twitch are yet to fully materialize.  But so far, very pleased with my shiny new purchase!