a gaming consoles other features

[Kyle Nuva]

Xbox, Playstation and Wii u had features i can only assume no one used

the original xbox had a menu for music... ok why?
we had radio, internet at least? and mp3 i wana say

but no game menu? the Playstation and more did

speaking of, sony allowed you to upload pictures and video?
and able to browse the internet. again, why?

typing with a game controller is extremely tedious and inconvenient

the wii u
it had like a skype call feature didnt? um what? why?
that could easily go wrong

there was mii verse and that was strict

the wii had silly things like, you could vote for silly things i remember
and it got tons of shovel ware crap too. weird name too

in splatoon, someone thought it was a good idea to have team names, like hotdogs vs hamburgers and more

short version: weird and meaningless ideas and features when its meant to play games

[shiel]

I used the original Xbox as a music hub. Had all my cds ripped to it and played my stereo off of it. So no, not useless.

[_I_]

xbone and ps3+ can play spotify while gaming

xbox has rewards where you can gain points for answering questions and surveys, redeem for store games/gear and gift cards

[Illusion of Progress]

In short, because a lot of devices try to do the most they can to make them more appealing to a wider audience so they can potentially sell more. That's really why. If a feature is small enough in time, effort, and maintenance to implement, then often times you'll see someone bundling it in.

Both the Sega Saturn and original PlayStation had music playback capability via CDs as well, a generation before the Xbox ever existed. You probably wouldn't purchase one just for this feature though. The PlayStation 2, however, was an example of a console that actually DID sell at times SOLELY for a side feature, and that was for being capable of being DVD player, as those were expensive in the early 2000s for a few years. Likewise, I think the PlayStation 3 may have sold a few extras over Blu-Ray capability (though Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were competing at the time so neither was yet a unanimous standard).

The original Xbox was probably the earliest a console made internet/multiplayer mainstream (not necessarily the first to offer the feature), and the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 lasted (as it happened near the end) until around at a time where streaming was starting to become big, so things like consoles and then eventually TVs were starting to attempt to become "smart" and offer software environments that enable the net (streaming like YouTube and Netflix being a big reason) because people were wanting to stream rather than use cable all the time so a TV that offered a way to connect to some of these services directly prevented purchase of a separate device to do so, like a PC, a console, a Roku box, or whatever.

[Mailer]

I have definitely had the opportunity to check out some of these features that were on my PS3 at some point but the novelty on them wore off pretty quickly. The web browser stuck on a bit longer, and I have vague memories of trying to run flash games on it, which sounds surreal even.

Nowadays though I am more concerned about whether trying to do that could land you with some exploits on your console at this point, seeing as that browser is so old and not very protected against malicious scripts on webpages and whatnot.

With all that said though, there is still lots of appeal in using the PS3 as a media server:
https://github.com/ps3mediaserver/ps3mediaserver
You just have to hope that the file extension on the media is actually supported, and, if not, use Handbrake to convert them. I will still use it to play games though; first and foremost. There is nothing to take that away.

[_I_]

ps3 and ps4 web browsers were not even full browser compatibility due to limited addons and poor flash/java/html5 support

[hCerisu ❤]

The 3DS and Wii U browser was actually useful because you could start it while running a game in the background.