Buying an Xbox 360 in Germany

So, if I go out and purchase an xbox 360 in Munich today, is it all gonna be in German, or English? Most games on sale at gamezone are dt version, so are any games I buy here going to have a language option, or are they simply going to be a bit rubbish, and in German?
I wanna get an xbox, get online, and play Gears of War, but I know it was banned in Germany. I don't mind toooo much waiting for that particular game on order from England, but I would prefer to be able to buy games from shops here most of the time. I don't care if instructions and manuals are in German, but please, can someone tell me if I am going to normally be able to select my gaming language? I am scared.

If you buy an Xbox 360 here, you can select the language option for the console to whatever language you want.
As for the games, it's a bit hit and miss.
Before I buy a game, I normally rent it from my local DVD store. If I like it and the game is in English, I will then just buy it from Saturn or Media Markt. If it's in German and I like it, I'll either get a friend to pick it up for me from the UK or go online and buy it from Play or CD-WOW.

If there are any particular games that you want to know if they are in German or English, then let me know.. I might be able to answer...

3lions pointed out to me today that KArstadt have dropeed the proper xbox package (IE, the one with the hard drive and stuff) down to 299 from 399. OK, the 399 offer came with 2 games, but they were both crap, so the 299 price is super awesome, half the price of a PS3 in fact.

Problem is, the games. I've had experience of buying games in gErmany, getting them home, then having to throw them into the bin because there was no option to get rid of the german lingo, and play the game properly, as it was meant to be played, in English. Fuckers.

You might also notice.. they just announced a new XBOX360 today... the "elite" version

http://www.xbox.com:80/en-US/hardware/xbox...xt.campSrc=Home

The Elite don't really offer me much. Some HD cable? blegh. 120 HD is probably useful...in the futire when you can download more content that just a few trailers or what have you. Right now, I don't need it.

I would like a black xbox. Big black marker pen will sort that out though.

OK, the 399 package that came down to 299 actually does include the 2 games originally included, Gotham Racing 3 or something, and something else called kameo.
Sweet.

Now to work out how to stream divx to it even though I have not got vista or windows media center...

don, get an old xbox for the streaming, really.. they are excellent. Run Xbox Media Center. Do a search and you'll see screenshots.. its perfect for the job..

don_riina, are you sure about the 299€ premium package with 2 games?
If so, where did you see this deal?

My gf and I were looking at them yesterday in Cologne and found a few deals on offer.

€299 for a premium pack
€299 for a core pack (yes, that's right, the same price as a premium!)
€333 for a core pack with 2 games and an extra wireless controller.
€279 for a ex-display premium pack with 2 games.

Anyone know how much they are in England right now?
I'll be going there soon so I might be better of getting it there.

*edit*
Oh yeah, agreed on the xbox 1 and XBMC for streaming! Awesome stuff, especially when you whack in a huge hard drive!

I am very wary when it comes to buying games too and end up getting everything through Amazon. It isn't instant buying satisfaction, but it ensures not having to deal with other more annoying crap like not understanding anything on the game you're trying to play.

I do have an old xbox, so I might well set it up. There is some kit called TVersity which says it streams to the xbox360, but it keeps crashing so far. Oh well.

The prices I have seen in the last 2 days

299 for core
299 for premium - dunno if games included
479 for premium plus a copy of Fifa road to world cup.

They were in Karstadt by nordbad. In Karstadt at Munchener Freihiet;

299 for core
399 for premium, with Proj Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo

I also saw 299 for premium (dunno about games) in Kaufhof Marienplatz. I got the premium for 299 (next to the core for the same price) at Saturn. Did not think it had games, nothing was mentioned, but in the box was a "party pack" including Gotham RAcing and Kameo, as originally included. PGR is OK, but Kameo looks well gay.

I wanna get some Tom CLancy Rainbow something or other in Vegas - anyone know if it plays in English?

For the record:

Call of Duty 2 - plays in German. Bit weird, because your mates are all shouting at you to come and help them kill the Germans...in German. Odd.

Project Gotham Racing 3 - English

Have not got around to playing anything else yet.

Get Brothers in Arms instead. Much better. Fact.

Man, COD2 was 29 euros, and I just wanted to get a couple of games before I find out what my mates are playing, and get them.

I'm well impressed by the thing though - it just plugs in and works. I know how to fiddle about with MTU sizes and muck around with packets and ports and all that gubbins, but this toy is great for the non-techy, they've done a really good job.

Hmm.. if thats correct then thats a pretty good deal!
If that was a mistake then damn, you're lucky haha!

Pretty tempted to goto Saturn and have a look now.

Really? I know how to muck around with these things to, but I still can not get it to connect to the live service. Always get MTU failure! No other helpful information, I started a tread yesterday about it.

But agree out of the box it pretty much just works (unusual in my case for MS).


If you have a mac use 360connect, will stream anything in itunes and iphoto to the xbox plus any wma movie files on the mac.

I have not tried Tversity, but from memory it will do on the fly codec transcoding of any movie file and streaming it, useful as the xbox only supports wma format.

Use media player 11 (or zune) both free downloads and you can stream music/photo/movies from XP. For those movies that need transcoding run them through VLC to convert to wma.

Your Thread has a few helpful responses, seems the Live service was getting an upgrade.

I think the Language setting only affects the language the console uses. There's another setting called Locale which seems to set the language the games use. Originally I had English/Germany and the English editions were in English but the Deutsche editions were in Deutsche. Now I use English/UK and since then every Deutsche game I've bought here is completely in English - including Tom Clancey games Rainbow Vegas and GRAW2 (since Don_Riina was asking).

I think it decides the language on the first load, so to change a game you've been playing you would need to delete all its saves, etc off the hard drive. I haven't tried that yet though.

Totally agree about the weirdness of playing COD in Deutsche. Mental.

And for anybody thinking 360's are cheaper in England, a quick look tells me they're not - quite the opposite. £300 for a system with 20GB HDD and one or two games, whereas that system is about €300 in D-land.

Interesing about that locale stuff. My xbox live profile is linked to my hotmail profile, and the locale was already set, IE greyed out. I'll have a fiddle later. Right now, there is seafood to be cooked. Man, I'm totally hungry.

My locale and language are set to English on the xbox360, but Burnout plays...in french. Alot of games are dual lingo, french and german - or at least it used to happen on my old xbox too. My xbox live stuff is all german - EG I can download Germna content for games, which is fine for games bought here, but what if I get a UK game from amazon? Am I gonna be limited in some of the downloadable content? Maybe. I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.

After a few hours of fiddling about this morning, I've got all my music and photos streaming to the 360 from my windows XP pro box perfectly. Using software called TVersity that encodes video WMV on the fly using directshow, so the xbox accepts it...most of the time. Some formats are a pain in the butt, but I've streamed most stuff to it OK, though there are sometimes some lags. Gotta fine tune a bit, but it seems to work.

try and get an older xbox premium off ebay, and the dvd -drives are easier to flash so you can play backups. the new xboxs use the samsung m28 drive and are a bitch to hack

Saturn are selling the premium with Kameo, PGR3 and 2 Wireless controllers for €289!

Is this price of €289 for the premium console correct because that would be one serious offer? I'll take them up on that if it is!

Actually... I think €289 is wrong!
But....
In the shop I converted it to au$ and I remember it worked out at $489
But converting it back to euros... 489 x 0.57 = €279
So I think I got mixed up and it's actually €279! even better!

Anyway, I'll let you know for sure tomorrow as I plan on buying one in the morning.

Wow, that's a serious bargain if correct. Please do let me know! I just happen to have Saturn vouchers sitting at home since xmas and this would be a nice way to get rid of them!

Well that sucks, I didn't have time to go yesterday, so I went today and there's no sign of that deal.
My gf asked and they said its gone back up to 299€ with the 2 games, but not the extra controller.

Looking around online I think that deal ENDED on the day I saw it and posted it here, oh well.

Saw that. I still picked up one last night, still a good price. Nice bit of kit, don't know why I waited so long but I must say it's ridiculously loud. I though the Dreamcast was loud but the xbox is in a different league!

Have you signed up to Live? I signed up before I went to bed but haven't played with it. The only option it would allow me enter for Locale was Germany even though I hadn't Germany selected in the settings menu. I'm just worried I'll be stuck with German demos and trailers now.

I didn't buy one in the end, I'll be in the UK for the next 2 weeks so I wouldn't be playing it too much anytime soon!
I'll see what's on offer when I get back.

I thought that might be the case with Live, it must know you are in Germany based on your IP.
I think I'll wait until I'm back in the UK for good before I sign up to Live.
The noise is the first thing I noticed when my brother got his, but then I saw it on a 40" HDTV and kinda forgot about it

I've done a bit of reading up on it this morning and it seems that the location you have specified in your Passport account that you use for signing up is the one that is taken. I have an old hotmail account that I used to sign up and I had a look this morning at the settings and it was set to Germany. I've now changed this and I'll check this evening if that solved the problem!

I'll keep that in mind, cheers.

I'm on the Gerry xbox live, and all demos and games I have downloaded so far have been in English. I reckon there might be a problem downloading additional game content though, EG Gears of War is banned here, so there probably wont be any GoW content available on the german xbox live. Still, who cares about shitty demos, you HAVE to get on xbox live, because then you can game properly. Loads of games now have more multiplayer shit built into them than single player gaming - and its 10000% more fun gaming against real people online man, its great. I am seriously blown away by how fantastically and seamlessly xbox live works; it just seems like an extension to your system, and is designed most excellently. Get on line. Now. I'm on as donriina if you wanna whip my arse at burnout as I drunkenly smash into stuff around the circuits.


Bloody hell yes. It is ridiculously loud. The PS3 is almost silent, but as soon as you whack a disc in the xbox, it whirrs up like a bloody jet plane.

Still, absolutely fantastic bit of kit, best toy I've bought in years.

hey, sorry cant be bothered to read the whole thread lol, but i have a uk 360 w/ xbox live (i live in wales, am on holiday here for a few months), and i have in the past created a japanese silver account to download their demos and they work fine when i switch gamertags... so in theory if you want to download say gears of war content it *should* work.

all you have to do is get a uk postcode to set it up. you can use mine if you wish - SA4 4XF

hope this helps!

Hey, cistm konfliqt, Mad Capsule Markets rule

haha! damn straight they do!!! got all 14 albums! u?

haha, no.
I'm a bit of a n00b compared to you! I have most stuff since Osc-Dis, plus the live Japanese DVD.
Seen them a few times too.

Hmmm, I was only going to quote this, but it just doesnt read right?


I'm online as Lions III if anyone wants to kill me at Gears of War or Rainbow Six:Vegas.

ok, I give up... I remember someone posted links to good stores in the UK for buying English Xbox 360 games, could someone repost them? I want to use a German CC, if that isn't a problem.

www.play.com sell games, and ship for free. Could take a while for them to arrive though

I'm probably going to buy a 360 in the next couple of weeks, what do you guys think is the best deal?

Arcade and some games, or premium and not as many games? Maybe somebody knows of any decent bundles around at the moment?

And what games to get? latest PES of course ^^, mirror's edge is meant to be great, farcry 2 aswell... Gears 2 ... any others?

The arcade is the one without the harddrive right? Don't buy that one.

Games: Saints Row 2, Gears of war 2.
Shop: www.play-asia.com ---> gow 2 ~45 € (uncut, english), 56 € at play.com, delivery time is about the same

Is the hard drive really that important?

I would say yes, very:

Downloadable game demos, very cool
Games come out with additional content later too
You can also store your games on your HD so the system runs quieter and faster

also, sometimes games are upgraded later, no idea how that is handled without HD though.

Should I get this :

http://www.play.com/Games/Xbox360/4-/79550...IV/Product.html

Will I be OK with regards to import duty since it's coming from Jersey...?

I think they do not sent electronics here.

i have bought a lot of games for my neighbour on englich e bay he has ben able to change the languages over from english to german so vice versa should be no problem

Shit, you're right.

"Unfortunately, we cannot delivery electronics, personal computers, gadgets, or mobile outside of the UK."

Does anybody know of any good value deals like that one from play.com but here in Germany, because frankly the bundles here suck. Frankly I don't want Sega Superstar Tennis.

http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a362395.html

http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a376874.html

Thanks, but they're the crappy prepackaged microsoft bundles, with Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones, neither of which interest me... Neither does Tomb Raider or James Bond Quantum Solace...

In the UK, all game stores offer their own bundles, I don't know why they're not doing that here :/

can anyone tell us the difference between all the 360's?

360 Arcade = white console + 256mb memory card

360 Premium = white console + 60Gb hard drive

360 Elite = black console + 120Gb hard drive

All include controllers and cables, the Premium and Elite contain a headset, ethernet cable and high def cable too (elite: hdmi, premium: component)

Also check:
Xbox 360 (Wikipedia)