The store was originally a native app for the first couple of years. Whenever the Ribbon UI went to the one with sparkles, the store went to a crappy web UI that was unbearable to use.

I love seeing bits and pieces of the original UI that were clinging on by necessity, namely the firmware upgrade screen. It was likely made immutable at the cost of UI updates.

It seems sparkles were added in 3.0 FW in 2009, while store was replaced in 2012.

I think FW update splash is not running the full OS and it only displays static image for simplicity, XMB never used static image as background.

Kind of the story of everything - responsive native app replaced by clunky web app.

> It was fine before.

Relevant PA: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/02/joy-and-joy-un...

The PS4-alike redesign was definitely way way worse though.

I had one way before the PS4 and never found the store usable. Super slow, apparent OOM crashes resetting scroll state, all kinds of pain, for years prior to the PS4.

That one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HOO6xg254A Maybe it wasn't best thing from usability perspective but I don't remember performance problems with it.

Oh wow—I don’t even remember that one. Wonder when they replaced it? I didn’t have one at launch, but didn’t think it was that long after that I picked it up.

It seems October 2012: https://www.ign.com/articles/2012/10/11/sony-unveils-redesig...