Xbox’s Mike Ybarra says Xbox One will support Captive Portals

Mike Ybarra, corporate VP of the Xbox and windows gaming platforms at Microsoft, has confirmed that the Xbox One will soon be able to connect via a captive portal.

Speaking on Twitter, Ybarra confirmed that the support is intended to enable simple connection flows for people who can suffer from restricted access via open networks, including hotels, hospital and the military.

Soon Xbox One will support captive portal enabling a simple connection flow for military, hotels, hospitals, etc. https://t.co/GnD2mIUgh2

— Mike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) April 26, 2017

Captive portals are mostly common on open Wi-Fi hotspots and often give the user a landing page with which to log in to in order to access the internet. This kind of access has always been an issue for gaming consoles which can struggle to access those landing pages, or like Nintendo consoles, do not have a web browser that supports HTTPS.

Doing this will allow users on these networks to play online, as well as download any updates for games and the Xbox system.