Microsoft's Xbox Store starts to revamp language support

Xbox Store Supported Languages Source: Windows Cardinal

One of the biggest pain points of the Xbox endeavour in recent years has fallen about entirely on localization. Nosotros don't see those problems in the Great britain or U.S. so much, but in countries where English isn't the default linguistic communication, Xbox can feel a chip foreign.

We've written extensively in the past nearly bug with Xbox in other countries, using feedback and testimony from fans all effectually the world. We've heard from Korean Xbox fans, who built up their own list of games that support their language since there's no way to filter it on Xbox Live. Nosotros've heard from fans from across places like China and Hong Kong about the Xbox Store's inability to differentiate between traditional and simplified Chinese. And we all know the tales of Xbox'south weak penetration in Japan, leaving us with many gaps in the Xbox library when compared to the competition.

There are plenty of other examples from across the earth where Xbox'due south language and localization efforts have fallen brusque. However, with contempo updates to the Xbox Store, we're starting to see improvements to the situation.

New supported languages chart

Xbox Store Supported Languages Source: Windows Central

Now, on the Xbox Store, there's a new chart that shows off in detail what languages are supported within different aspects of the game. Not every game supports this yet, which may require Microsoft to enact policy changes on its developers to strength them to include this data. Yet, there are a handful of games that are starting to list out this information.

If you go to a game'southward store folio, and then curlicue down to details, so highlights, some games show a listing of supported languages in a handy nautical chart format. This shows how the languages are displayed across the game's interface, audio, and subtitles, in every major language across every supported Xbox region.

A step in the correct direction

Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S Source: Matt Dark-brown | Windows Primal

As of writing, there's no fashion to search and filter against this information, which is one of the biggest bug for gamers in non-English markets. Many games simply don't even have sound or localized subtitles for various languages for whatsoever reason, and if you're unable to filter confronting that data, information technology's hard to know what games you'll really be able to play.

If Microsoft'due south aspirations of reaching the world's 2-billion potent gaming market across phones, consoles, and PC are genuine, then further investment in localization for those regions is an absolute must. Naturally, there are problems from a business perspective to smash language back up for all of the earth'southward hundreds upon hundreds of languages and dialects, just at the very least, people should be able to filter and search based on their region, without needing to resort to fan-curated lists. To that terminate, Microsoft should also probably require their developers to list supported languages in the future to support search filters.

Either way, this is a great stride in the right direction, even if there'due south still work to be done.

Thank you to @FVSfabricio for the tip!

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