The frustrating choice Xbox Live has forced me to make
In my native New Zealand – a nation of 4 million people tucked away in an isolated corner of the world – we were always rather jealous of the additional Xbox Live services and content continually added to the US marketplace.
To this day, New Zealand still has no Netflix or any equivalent service on Xbox Live – only the comparatively lackluster and expensive Zune service with a seriously stripped-back content selection is on offer. The variety of other services on the NZ marketplace is, similarly, pitiful when stacked up against its US counterpart. In some cases, we even miss out on full games if the publisher doesn’t feel like a release in our territory is worth the effort – Telltale’s The Walking Dead is but the latest frustrating example.
Now that I live in America, you’d think that I could move on from all of this. There are loads of great services that, by rights, I should now be able to take advantage of: Comcast Xfinity, HBO GO, Amazon Instant Video and much more – not to mention the games that never made it our way.
But there’s one debilitating problem: Xbox Live won’t permit me to change the region of my account. So these services are still unavailable to me despite the fact that I now legitimately live in a region in which they are offered.
I looked forward to using this service, among others, at my new home, but...
An Xbox customer-service representative did offer one solution, though, and it was simply this: To turn my back on my current Xbox Live account and start a new one.
The problem is, however, that I have five years’ worth of investment in my existing account, and the frustrations of starting from scratch are difficult to quantify. It’s not the reset GamerScore that gets me – not in the slightest – but rather the loss of five years’ worth of unlocks and milestones associated with that account: every weapon or accessory unlocked in Battlefield 3, every armor permutation in Halo: Reach, every paid-for DLC season pass, every map or difficulty unlocked in countless other games. You get the idea.
Go through the grind of unlocking all those decent weapons and attachments all over again, getting destroyed by players making use of those very items the whole while? Er, no thanks
As such, I’ve opted to forego a US account and keep my New Zealand one, but the problems associated with this course of action are almost equally as frustrating. Of course, I’m now tied to New Zealand’s much weaker marketplace, which means I’m both limited in terms of content (there’s no way for me to now legitimately buy The Walking Dead, for instance) and forced to pay for my subscription and DLC purchases in New Zealand dollars (FYI, all prices are hiked quite considerably in Australasia and don’t translate to a simple one-to-one currency conversion). I’ve also discovered that some of my pre-purchased digital content no longer works on my new, NTSC console. For instance, my heart sank a little when I realized that I would be unable to complete the Resident Evil: Code Veronica HD playthrough I began before leaving New Zealand. It’s a game that I never finished when it first released, and now my attempt to rectify that is perpetually stuck at a roughly 90% completion level.
The worst part of all of this is that I see no reason for it to be the case, and my efforts to gain a workaround or even an explanation from Microsoft have yielded no results. I understand that, potentially, some users might be able to exploit the ability to change regions at will. But surely the appropriate checks and balances can be put in place to ensure that only those who’ve legitimately moved to another region can allow their Live profile to reflect this. Hell, I’d even be prepared to pay for the ability to change my profile’s region – something afforded to those who wish to change their GamerTag.
I feel like some higher power is hellbent on preventing me from ever finishing this game, even though I bought it legitimately
People move to different countries. It happens. But the irony of cloud-based services like Xbox Live profiles is that they don’t appear to be able to move along with their owners. It’s a frustrating problem that, truthfully, in this day and age, shouldn’t even be an issue.
As it stands, my advice to new Xbox Live users, no matter where in the world they may be, is this: make an American account your primary account when you sign up. Set up an account for your region only to buy and download region-locked content such as Games On Demand offerings. It seems to be the only way to avoid grief if you ever find yourself living in another part of the world in the future. And with console life cycles seemingly growing, you just can’t anticipate these things…
I had exactly the same problem when we moved from the UK to NZ about 6 years ago – I sold my 360 in a fit of pique because of it!
Yeah, I’ve gotta be honest – I pondered whether this was the last straw and whether I should turn my back on the platform altogether. But like I mentioned in the post, I have too much invested in this platform and this account to face that prospect
Not just in terms of the unlocks etc attached to that profile, but all my XBL friends and things like that…
Good read Leg. Maybe a US account for movies etc.. and your Kiwi account for gaming?
Thanks, Browncoat. The problem with that (and it’s something I should really have addressed in the blog) is that all of those services require a paid, Gold account. So I’d have to pay for two active Gold accounts in order to access those services, and that’s not happening – nor should it have to.
Good read, I’ve got a bit more to talk about after reading it than what I was originally going to ask you.
I accidentally created my gamertag as a USA one, had my Xbox originally in NZ and now live in the UK. So I can relate to all of these things, kind of.
My first problem with this was buying DLC / XBLA games / etc etc with mspoints but in NZ. I found a website that allowed me to buy USA mspoints and they would email me the code, so that was great, I was able to download things. I did this instead of using a NZ gamertag as I wanted the downloads to be linked to my main gamertag.
This worked out well for a while but then some games started coming out with some kind of region locking on the DLC. So even though I could see the DLC with my USA gamertag, it knew I was trying to download it from NZ so would stop me from downloading it anyway. Call of Duty Black Ops was a perfect example of this. I then opted to use my NZ gamertag (which I only created as a spare for splitscreen with friends) to purchase DLC for games like this.
That worked out well, but then when I moved to the UK, I didn’t bring my Xbox with me, deciding to buy one when I got here, which is fine, but the region locked type DLC wont download onto this Xbox now as it knows I’m not in NZ. So even though i’ve paid for it, I am unable to download it. Gets to about 99% and then fails. Annoying! I have not played COD:BO since (no loss really).
The other main problem is with when I got my WP7 phone. Wanting to connect it to my main gamertag and also purchase apps/games is impossible as the only method of payment is by credit/debit card and you can’t edit the billing country for the card on the windows live account, I couldn’t find any way around this and in the end stopped using my WP7 and went with an Android phone.
Which sort of brings me to where I was originally going with this; what do you think will happen when they bring out Windows 8, Surface and Windows Phone 8? With their whole wanting to connect everything over all devices I assume it will mean you’ll need the one account for all of them, which could just bring this same problem we’re having now into a much lager scale. You’d think they would have to figure out some way around it? (Unless they already have mentioned it somewhere and I’ve just missed it).
Anyway this ended up a lot longer than I originally intended so I’m going to cut it off now.
I have a WP7 phone too, and the XBL integration was a big part of why I chose to go with it. But I see now that I may be hamstrung by my loyalty to this restrictive system.
You raise a good point that I hadn’t mentioned: in keeping my NZ account, I also have to keep the NZ credit card that I have associated with it! I was hoping to pay this off soon and be done with it altogether, but any XBL or WP7 purchases must be made with this card :/
As for Windows 8, Surface and WP8, your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid. But where six months ago I would have committed to this ecosystem without hesitation, I’m now going to watch very carefully. If I’m going to continue to be hamstrung by legacy issues stemming from the region in which I happened to start my account, it might be time for me to jump ship and invest in a system that won’t penalize me for that.
I’m convinced Microsoft DOES have a way around this issue, but for whatever reason the company just doesn’t want to make it widely available. I say this because, historically, account holders HAVE been able to change their accounts if they opened their accounts before XBL was officially available in their region. But I presume it’s perhaps a bit more effort on Microsoft’s part than the company is prepared to make for all affected.
I’m in the same shitty leaky boat Chris, moved to Japan and I can’t buy ms points to buy content. So frustrating!!
Man, that’s a real bummer
Maybe you could get some of your former Mighty Ape workmates to get you a couple of NZ cards and email you the redeem codes? It shouldn’t have to come to that, though 
Major Nelson actually wrote me about this problem the other day – I’ll either update this post or make another entry with his comments as soon as I get some free time!
Hello,
I did manage to get my account Migrated. But here is the catch: I live in the EU and I had to make a complain to the Data Protection Comissioner of my country of residence. Think is, by not updating your personal information Microsoft is in fact VIOLATING an EU directive. You can find more information about it at http://www.itisourdata.com, a simple website I have set-up to help other disruntlet EU customers with information.
Hi, John. I actually stumbled across your website at one point during my research into this problem! On an interesting and related note, VG247 reported only a few days ago that Microsoft is actually now supporting account migration: http://www.vg247.com/2012/10/11/xbox-live-account-migration-confirmed-for-gamers-moving-country/