Video game consoles have a long history with web browsers. From the advent of the World Wide Web, consoles have been trying to get online. Browsers on video game consoles were initially very much an attempt to provide a cheap gateway to the web for a casual audience lacking technical expertise, though as time progressed they’ve become a greater and more integrated part of systems.
This article takes a look at browsers on video game consoles in detail, though only covers official web browsers. Many consoles have browsers installable via custom firmware and homebrew, but they’re beyond the scope of this post, as are non-web systems such as Satellaview and online services that didn’t provide a browser, such as XBAND, Sega Meganet, and Sega Channel.
↫ Declan Chidlow
The article starts off with the Philips CD-I, which has always been a fascinating product for technology fans in The Netherlands because that’s where Philips is from. Memory that far back is untrustworthy, but I can definitely remember being inundated with commercials, advertising, magazine articles, and newspaper reports about the CD-I, all throughout its rather troubled life. Yet, I don’t remember anything about it being capable of browsing a rudimentary web.
Of course, we’re talking 1995 here, a time when I didn’t even have internet at home yet, although I did use the web at a friend’s place at that time. We didn’t get internet at home until I think 1997 or 1998, followed by the move to broadband cable internet just a year later, since our small rural town happened to be one of the first places to get broadband. Good times.
Did anyone ever actually use browsers on consoles, though? I mean, using them always felt incredibly clunky, and by the time they were capable enough to really do anything we all had laptops and later smartphones anyway. I certainly don’t remember anyone using them for anything but a gimmick, but perhaps my sample size was far too small and not diverse enough.
I had a friend in the UK back in the day who used a Dreamcast (with the keyboard, mouse and broadband adapter) to browse the web. It was a weird vibe.
Same, I had a launch day Dreamcast thanks to my part time job at the time repairing and maintaining arcade machines at the local video store. The owner let me reserve one along with the keyboard and mouse, so I was was one of the first people in my small town to have a Dreamcast. I didn’t get the broadband adapter though; it was expensive, and I only had dialup internet at home at the time anyway. I’ll be honest, the web browser was pretty terrible even by 1999 standards from what I recall, though it was really cool that it shipped with the system (on GD-ROM, of course). I had better browsers on my PC which at the time dual booted Slackware and Windows 98, and BeOS a year later.
The keyboard did come in handy for some games, especially Phantasy Star Online for chatting, and of course I ended up running NetBSD on the Dreamcast too (my first direct experience with any BSD) which required the keyboard.
oh boy.. memories 🙂
I always wanted an Dreamcast, and then, when it was already basically EOL of the Dreamcast I got one relatively cheap. Unfortunately, sourcing of games was limited to one shop and that one did not really lower prices or anything. So in total I had (still have it in a drawer under my TV) only 5 or 6 games.
Loved that thing.. still do.
I used the browser on the Wii plenty of times, but that was because it supported Flash, and there were websites with Wii-friendly mouse-driven Flash games that worked great with the Wii-mote
This entirely depends on the manufacturer.
Xbox has a fully functional Edge browser, that is integrated with their games for guides. It can also stream 3rd party services, including games. That means everything you have on Steam can be accessed with the right tools
PlayStation purposefully cripples their own browser to minimum. However people still find ways. They really don’t want other game services to work though.
Nintendo does not even offer one. They don’t have streaming apps either. No YouTube of Netflix on latest Switch 2
This all depends on what you want to do. If you have a large 60″ TV, and want to have a “lean back” browser, plugging a mouse and a keyboard to an Xbox gets the job much better than any internal TV one.
The Switch includes a web browser. It’s how you access/navigate the eShop and the News stories.
There are ways to access it outside of the eShop as well, although I’ve never tried.
Here’s one tutorial:
https://www.imore.com/how-use-hidden-web-browser-nintendo-switch
Of course people will find ways. Most Internet connected devices have to have a tiny browser at least for “captive portals”
But that does not mean Nintendo is not actively hostile against users having them.
sukru,
That’s an interesting point you bring up. I’ve never had the occasion to try a console at a hotel or some place with a captive portal…I do wonder how that would fair.
I’ve seen some old windows computers that could not get online because the captive portal failed. I believe the combination of an old OS plus a new browser can fail because the OS makes no attempt to detect the captive portal and the browser blocks the captive portal’s attempt to hijack website requests.
In such cases, some websites exist to assist captive portals through intentional insecurity.
http://httpforever.com/.
Captive portals are such a hack job! I’m glad I don’t have to deal with them frequently.
Edit: the local cable ISP used to use similar HTTP hijacking to send out announcements. It didn’t last long, they most have gotten a lot of complaints.
This link does a good job covering how google handles captive portals.
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1k-gP2sswzYNvryu9NcgN7q5XrsMlUdlUdoW9WRaEmfM/mobilebasic
It only reinforces how much of a fragile mess captive portals are, with timers, polling, and ostrich algorithms. Chrome may even changes it’s behavior depending on the version of windows so as to not collide with the OS behavior. I can’t get over how bad of an idea it is for operating systems/browsers/isps to normalize the hijacking of arbitrary DNS/HTTP connections. which should have never been allowed. I would prefer to see it added to the information conveyed by DHCP when the connection is initialized/renewed. Of course, that didn’t happen and instead technology ends up evolving with layers of complex hacks.
Alfman,
I agree Captive portals are a horrible mess.
But on the bright side, they make device manufacturers include at least a rudimentary browser in their systems.
Which opens ways to creative uses.
(This also happens for Amazon Fire sticks, which discontinued their Silk browser, or PS5, or Switch, or … unfortunately not Roku, they are stubborn)
sukru,
Personally I’d like to see more data on that. Given that I’ve already witnessed cases of hardware not being able to connect normally even with a browser, I’m not that confident every network connected device has everything needed.
We used to have a roku device and I don’t believe it had a browser. So I guess this means it wouldn’t have worked behind some captive portals, depending on their implementation.
I have noticed that some captive portals are leakier than others. For example, letting email ports go through but blocking web traffic until you go through the portal. Conceivably the roku might have worked there with non-standard ports…? I really have no idea and didn’t think to test any of this.
In theory, a VPN tunnel could be created on top of a captive portal that lets DNS requests through unguarded. It all depends on the portal’s specifics!
I have a friend who reads fanfiction on his PS Vita, so there’s a data point.
Brings back memories 😀
Is still own the browser-module for my DS.
I had one of those too. Still own it.
Web browsers on consoles are great, they’re one of the main attack vectors for jailbreaking consoles.
“Did anyone ever actually use browsers on consoles, though?”
Sure, they were the entry point to run a jailbreak of the console.