Language selection locked to regions - put pressure on MicroSoft to fix!

We live in a multilingual world with millions of people moving between countries, and also native people preferring to use another language than their main language.

For some strange reason this is very difficult for Microsoft to understand.

After setting region the selection of languages is limited to the native languages from that spesific region, denying the user to select language freely.

This is making lots of problems with menu languages, game languages, and also kinect voice commands for people living in non-english speaking countries.

Sony have understood this, and no such language to region lock on the PS4.

As of today it looks like Microsoft is simply ignoring this problem.

There is a thread in the feedback forum regarding this with more than 5000 upvotes.

Please upvote that thread to make MS solve this "bug" that makes problems for 10 000's of Xbone users!

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BUG - TOMB RAIDER / XBOX LIVE GOLD MARCH DLC - LANGUAGE ERROR

Your issue is completely different

What you want is impossible

English version isnt available in your region

He was queueing rhe wrong version

Very few games allow for multiple language selection

Since the game is region locked you can only get the french or grrman version

 

Xbox One - Can't get 360 games with gold games in July

Yes. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is also IP locked in the same way. In fact, quite a selection of Games on Demand for Xbox 360 are either IP address locked (described above) or region locked (the region of the digital game from the marketplace - NTSC, NTSC/J or
PAL - must match the region of the console).

In order to really check the region of your account yourself, go to this link: live.xbox.com/accountmigration and observe in your address bar, of the Internet browser, what country and language automatically appears between ".com/" and "accountmigration".
Just in case, you should also check the region of your IP address at whatismyipaddress.com .

 

If Microsoft are going to keep this ridicoulus language lock at least tell us why :

- Why a person moving from one region to another should be denied to use his own language on Xbone?

- Why a person moving to or living in a non-english speaking region should be denied using Kinect voice control in english even if that person has english as h*s native language or speaks english fluently?

- Why a person living in a region should be forced to use the regions native language and not choose language freely?

- Google understands that a language lock is plain stupid.

- Sony understands it.

- Apple understands it.

- 99% of people that gets this explained understands it.

Microsoft apparently do NOT understand it.

Why?

My guess is that like all the other threads about this and all the thousands of users complaining about this, the answer from Microsoft will be silence...

 

Hi CrankLeaf,

these forums are watched and monitored by Xbox staff so they do see the community comments. However the feedback site and thread you linked to

here is where the Xbox development team see the suggestions and feedback.

Neither of us know why its not been implemented but neither of us know if its actually possible to implement. Backwards compat was though to be un-achievable but it is now here so perhaps your suggestion will appear in time.

To others reading this - please continue to post on the feedback site - it is looked at regularly.

But to put it in some context as to why it might not appear immediately - the "don't lock regions" thread had 5495 votes in a little over a year. The bring "Red Dead Redemption" to backwards compat has had 47007 votes in under a week.

 

Hi SadisticZeus and thank you for your answer.

Regarding the difference in votes in the "don't lock regions" vs "Red Dead Redemption" thread you are quite right that it is a big difference in number of votes.

However I think that it is too easy to look blindly at the numbers.

- The backwards compat function was heavily advertised and got a lot of owners aware.

- It is lots of threads regarding the language lock, not just this one all over the net.

- The votes are not measuring importance for the owner.

Red Dead is an excellent game and I would also like that game backwards compat for my Xbone, but for me it is a lot more important to be able to use kinect voice commands in english, and the systems forbid me that just because I live in Norway or use the
language that I want in the menus.

Also, the thread mentioned in the feedback forum is as you point out about a year old. 5495 votes and about 1300 messages.

But not one single response from a MS official.

In one year.

Just the same in all the other threads regarding this.

Not "we will look into this", "sorry, impossible, cant be done", "we will fix this", "Sony, Apple, Google can do what they want, but we lock the languages". No, nothing. Silence.

It is very difficult to understand why it should be difficult to remove the language to region lock, and even more difficult why it should be difficult to let me speak to my kinect in english.

What if this was the case with Windows and you moved to tex Norway and told that "Ah, you want to use windows, then you have to use the norwegian version with norwegian language, Microsoft demands that"!

 

Yes a little response in the feedback thread would be great....

Should be an easy fix right?

 

Hi TinyNiceT,

If you would like this feature as well I would suggest that you go to the feedback thread and "Up Vote" the request. Microsoft has really been paying attention to items in there and have already completed a lot of requests.

 

Been there, done that... got the T-shirt ;-)

It just passed the 6000 marker...

xbox.uservoice.com/.../6028840-don-t-region-lock-the-languages