Why can't we choose language and location independently?

Why are the language and location options so restrictive?

I live in Switzerland, so my options are restricted to the national languages. Which means that for most games, I am doomed to getting them in local translation/dub, which is generally dreadful. On the Store, I have to read bing-translated drivel for all
but the AAA titles. I'd much rather to enjoy my media in the original.

Apart from that, what about english-speaking expats? They can only set the language to English if they set the location to USA or such. In which case I am 100% sure the Xbox OS will give them no end of trouble because the physical location does not match
the one in the Settings.

What about Spanish? Do you know how many spanish speakers we have in Switzerland? And Portuguese? Perhaps they would enjoy using the system in their language...

Anyhow, I just can't see a reason for this ultra-restrictive approach. I can't imagine there's a technical constraint that makes it impossible to freely associate language and location according to need or wish. At the least, English could be made available
as a choice in all locations.

:)

 

Xbox one location setting

why is it that the xbox one installation steps have limited options.

what i mean is this:

we want to use the english language setting because kinect microphone works with english voice commands, so no problem there

but that way i have to choose uk or us as my location, even though my real location is the netherlands

but this means i have no acces to the dutch xbox store for game purchase. And buying a game from the us store does not work

not all games available for us are available in dutch xbox store.

so by selecting location netherlands it will only give me dutch and belgium language settings. Why?

dutch people can speak english perfectly and im sure some english speaking people alsp speak other languages.

the location setting and language setting should not be combined but seperate. Time for a software update, think

thx in advance for the response

 

Netflix Voice Support - How to Use

If I choose Norsk as my language, then yes I can choose Norge as my location, the only problem is:

1. Norwegian is not supported by the Kindle at all.Hence if I choose Norsk there is no "Spoke Language" option for Kinnect control

2. Therefore this made little difference to my problem, since there are no Kinnect voice functions anywhere like this, they are clearly disabled in Netflix.

3. My Norwegian is very basic - why on earth can you not choose any language for any location?? It's not as though if you live in 1 country you can therefore only speak 1 language.

This is now going on long enough and I would like a straightforward answer. MS created this system so must be aware of how it works?

 

The ability to freely choose from all supported languages has been requested a long time ago. I'm not sure if MS has even replied anything to it. There are a ton of votes for the request on the feedback site. It sucks how they region lock something like
languages. I want my stuff to be in English. Not in Finnish. This is a giant step back and I can't think of anything else that actually region locks languages.

 

I guess I should have searched the forums first. Thanks for the info.

Maybe MS is just trying to remove the notion of choice. Like their Upgrade to Win10 popup that you can't dismiss, and that automatically checks itself in Windows Update. But that's beside the point.

Can you link me to the site you mentioned?

 

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

That is the one with now over 7k votes. No clue why MS hasn't done something about it already. If everyone else can do it, a major software company should be able to change this as well.

 

The reasons are region locking and localization. Do a google search with "video game" and add either or both of those terms and you'll find a lot of different articles on the subject.

Some arguments make sense, others do not. But there are plenty of issues that arise when it comes to differences in international laws.

Just a few examples of possible issues.

Copyright laws may or may not apply depending on the country.

Censorship laws vary between different countries.

A distributor may not have the rights to certain IPs outside of their region.

Some game content is actually altered or even omitted, depending upon what country or region the game is released, in order to make certain content less offensive for that region. Fallout 3 is an example. When it released in Japan, the reference to mini-nukes
and the nuking of Megaton was removed due to Hiroshima & Nagasaki.

The amount of international red tape that is in the way is the most reasonable explanation why the thread that is linked to and it's 7k votes isn't being responded to... and there's a good possibility it won't be.

 

If that were the case, why is only the XBOX One doing this? XBOX 360 Never did this, Playstation

3/4 never locked this. Any Smartphone can be set to any language, and there is a ton of games on those. My guess is they are covering themselves with regards to Kinect Voice Recognition. Once millions of people with several different accents are trying to
get that to work, they've opened up a potential can of worms where people will complain that their hardware is not working as it's supposed to. Still I have my (Dutch) XBOX One permanently set to English/UK, and use the Smartglass app on my iPhone for purchases...
Would have preferred to not have to use this workaround.

 

XBOX 360 Never did this, PlayStation 3/4 never locked this.

How sure are you that Xbox 360 didn't? I can't recall any game on the 360 ever having the ability to subtitle in all known languages. I can't speak for PS consoles, but I'd like
to hear of any game made for them that can subtitle all languages. Did you play the Japanese version of Fallout 3 to see if they did or didn't remove the 'mini-nuke' content? (Not really being sarcastic BTW... just going by what info I've found).

I believe Kinect has a list of supported locales and they may even have a disclaimer that not all languages are supported. Either of those would be covering themselves well enough.

Another quick search yielded me another answer... MS has left it up to the publishers to deal with regional support.

I don't know that much about smart phones. I do know that the laws may differ, depending on what kind of device it is. Smartphones may play games, but they definitely are not consoles...
and I don't see any phones playing Fallout 3 anytime soon.

 

^We don't really focus that much on just the games here, though. The thing is, we can't even use the console's own OS in a language we want to as we are only given an option to choose from the languages Microsoft pre-selected for the locale. Oh, and the
store is an absolute horror as well since it seems like they really are using Bing to translate everything from English. The OS and the store have nothing to do with publishers, copyright laws etc. It's just Microsoft failing to provide a basic option that
is there for pretty much every other device that let's you choose a language. Maybe it is because of the Kinect, idk, but if it is it just goes to show how big of a failure that thing is if you can't even have your system's language changed without breaking
that thing.

By the way: at least on 360 several games actually have a wide selection of languages available on disc. They simply don't have the option to choose the language in the settings. Workaround? Switch your console's locale. Suddenly that horrible Finnish translation
of Halo 4 is back to being in English I do believe the same does apply for One games as well as my friend had Minecraft in English for as long as her One was set to UK but since now changing locale messes up your marketplace (something that didn't happen
on 360) she had to change back to Finnish. It's horrible. I'm just glad Finnish isn't that widely supported by developers and so far only a few games have translated content. If it becomes more common then good bye Xbox.

 

I would just be guessing, but I'd say the answer may be alluded to in your statement that says you have to choose among the languages MS provides for each locale.

To me, this seems to be a way to localize or regionalize gaming content. Certain games release in certain regions with the aforementioned altered content. The regional limitation of languages would make sense in this aspect.

Using Fallout 3 for an example again. If I download the game in the US, I would obviously have English, in addition to a few other regional selections that are most commonly used here. I wouldn't have Japanese as a choice and therefore I wouldn't download
the Japanese version and then wonder why it doesn't have the mini-nuke content.

Another possible reason would be that the game devs would need to provide subtitles for all the languages that are supported. If there were no way to localize content... they'd either have to provide subtitles for every language supported by MS or have a
lot of people very upset because they purchased a game in their region and there weren't subtitles for that region's language.

 

The real answer is small minded business people, who still think everyone buys everything locally, instead of realizing the global market, and taking advantage of that.

But you have to make do with what you have, at the end of the day it could be worse.

 

I'm sorry Blue, but that really would just apply to games being in the local language. Not the OS or the Marketplace with no options to choose from. I have to agree with Enen. They really didn't think globally. It's a shame since people can easily move across
the planet these days yet they might not even know the basics of the local language before doing so.

And at least get people to translate the stuff in the Marketplace instead of Bing lol

 

^Simple question you may know the answer to, I don't. Can you set the region your console is in to be different than your actual region? I just chose Eastern US since that's where I've always lived. Could I have chosen a Japanese locale for my console even
though I live here?

 

You can choose a different locale for your console, yes. It'll mess up certain features such as the Marketplace or the TV stuff but at least it allows you to choose a language you'd prefer. Just make sure that your actual profile is set to your correct region
as lying about the profile region is against the rules (or at least it was). If you change your locale on your console then you're pretty much limited to the website/SmartGlass to do your purchases as it'll show the wrong Marketplace otherwise so not everything
will show on the marketplace and it can/will be in another currency. On 360 changing locale has no negative effects, tho.