Confusion over the Localisation Requirements for Xbox Store pages

Question

Hi,

I am currently in the process of creating Store pages for a game and I am getting confused about if it is required to localise the Store page, as the documentation I have found appears to contradict each other. This page here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/publish/store-policies#107-localization states that the Store page must be localised for all the Languages that the product supports, however, this page https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/publish/publish-your-app/create-app-store-listing?pivots=store-installer-msix says that it is recommended that to provide a Store listing in each language. Then in the Xbox_Games_Store_Policies_May2021 document that can be downloaded from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/xboxpublisherguide under Metadata Localization & Digital Assets it lists the Minimum requirements of

1. EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish) & Japanese required across all marketing copy strings if the full title is being released in regions where those languages are spoken (including French for Canada).
2. Portuguese is also required if releasing to Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese preferable)
3. Japanese Sort String must be in Hiragana, single byte space, and single byte number. All other strings can be made up of Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, Alpha-numeric and English if no direct translation is available, e.g. Halo
4. Parity with competitive platforms for any additional languages.

So I am looking for some clarity on this subject before pushing the product to Certification.

Thanks,

Murdo

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

The Store policy document you mentioned first means that you need to localize your product for the language that you declare to support in your app. This is required for your product.

The publish document you post secondly is a guide for creating Store listing. This requires you to create localized Store listings for each language that declare to support in your app. This will affect the store page.

The Xbox document you shared is a requirement. I think you need to make sure all marketing copy strings are localized if your app supports EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish) & Japanese and you want to publish your games to these markets. Since Xbox is not supported here, I can only talk in the side of releasing common applications. You need to contact the Xbox support to confirm this requirement.

Thank you.

---

If the answer is the right solution, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.