MS has never understood or indeed wanted the www to happen.
They were able to hold back www development for 5 years+ with their IE6 shenanigans, but the cats out of the bag now.
The XBox uses the web in the best way possible for a games console - on-line gaming. Maybe it's just me but I find a console a rubbish browsing platform - I've got browsers on my PS3, PSP and Wii and never use them. It is possible that Microsoft just don't have a browser in the 360 because it's not a great place to put a browser.
Microsoft own Hotmail, they've ported Office on-line, XBox supports on-line gaming, they make what is still the most popular single browser (which is under very active development), they produce web servers and a massive range of developer tools for the web from Visual Studio to Silverlight, they're working their arse off to get back into the mobile web market.
If they're not into the web they're doing their best to hide it with their actions and investments. They were, by their own admission, slow to get to it but I don't think that's a valid criticism now.
Now they're just all over the place but that's different to being anti.
I don't know a single person using the online Office versions, because, well, they don't compare to the desktop ones.
Yesterday, I saw a graph showing Hotmail losing about 10% market share, mostly to Gmail.
Their new Xbox website broke every existing link on the domain.
Mocrosoft does not get the web, even if they might get the internet.
(Yes, websites are software).
When MS announced support for facebook on the xBox, I thought "hmm why not just give users a browser". Then they announced twitter integration... "Umm how about just stuff a browser on there".
It's farcical. But OTOH, it fits right with MS's plan - they detest the www. It's open. It's free. It's not a walled garden they can monetize.
Last time I heard the web division at MS still makes a huge loss. Which leads me to believe they're not in it to make money. They're in it to mess it up, stifle progress, and keep people buying their installable software. They did an absolutely fantastic job of that for 5 years or so.
One has to navigating the web with a joystick (have you tried it? It's fifth circle of hell terrible), the other has you suffering from cramps in 10 minutes flat.
If you've used the browsers, you know just astronomically bad those ideas are. A browser doesn't not belong on a joystick-driven device, it's slow to use and frustrating as hell. So why would MS put a browser on the Xbox?
And how exactly would a browser on the Xbox decrease their lock-in?
But taking all of that out of the equation - assuming that magically the Wii and the PS3 are both capable of interacting with USB mice and keyboards... how many people do you know who have an (extension cord required) USB connection to a keyboard and mouse combo on their couch? I can count these people on one hand. In fact I can count them on 3 fingers, and all are pretty hardcore tech geeks to boot.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360
* edit: formatting
I tried to find some information, but the best I could do was from an article written in 2009 (http://www.next-gen.biz/news/ps3%E2%80%99s-web-browser-usage...):
"The PS3's browser has a 0.04 share of the 'internet market', a miniscule proportion when compared to, say, the PC's 88.7 percent majority, yet it's a figure which sits comfortably ahead of the Wii's 0.01 percent."
Granted, those numbers are horribly out of date, but it would seem to indicate that the population (at large) does agree.
The Wii browser, having used that also, is pretty much the same, plus muscle pain.
I know a lot of gamers and have yet to meet a single person who uses the browsers with any sort of regularity. In fact, the only instances where people use browsers on consoles nowadays are when the game brings it up by itself (DLC purchases, news updates, etc), and even then it's always more painful to use than a native menu would've been.
You need to cite your sources, because from where I stand - which is that of an avid gamer heavily involved in the gaming community, I simply do not see any significant usage of console browsers at all.
> "Even when a tiny DSi has a very capable browser, smart phones have browsers. And a big gaming console from a supposed software company doesn't even have a web browser?"
The major obstacle with browsers is not platform hardware, it's usability. Smartphones and the DSi have browsers because the web is (as we discovered with the iPhone) very easy to navigate with a touch device, particularly a finger-driven touch device.
It is significantly less awesome when it's driven with a joystick. In fact, the experience is downright terrible. Implementing a browser on a console with joystick (or Wiimote) controls is a waste of time and energy, and can only serve to tarnish your brand as your users struggle with why the hell you implemented such a dumb thing.