Why cant the Xbox 360 have a browser on it?

[WereKitten]

welshbloke said:

Never under estimate the power of Integration. You may have a web browser and you may be able to visit Facebook but it will not be a pleasureable experience as the site is not designed for the console browser.

A good example of this would be the BBCi Player. Availble previously through 3rd party products but not easy to use. Suddenly it is integrated into the PS3 OS and boom you have huge take up of the service.

Netflix would be a similar example for the US and the Xbox and I have not doubt that the social sites will benefit hugely.

There's a great downside to specialized integration, and that's flexibility/robustness.

Create an integrated facebook/twitter interface and the next time the backend interface / protocol of those services changes, the software on your console brokes until it's updated. A web interface is always up-to date, as the web browser just has to be coded to the HTML/JS/Flash standards and not to the single services specs.

Frankly I'd prefer to have a web browser that works with things such as gmail and even lets me check my incoming google-office documents or Picasa albums shared by my friends, rather than waiting for the console maker to provide me with interfaces to the services I want to use.