I just moved to Germany and I'm looking to buy games for my Xbox.

Are all the games in German, or will language be determined by locale set in my Xbox, such as Ubisoft games?

@foggel: It's generally set by your XBOX language unless they went through the trouble of dubbing the game into German.

I have to imagine they would be, given FEGIS or whatever the hell the acronym is.

I would assume so, but given that there are Germany specific versions of a lot of games, maybe not.

On the PSN I cannot read or understand what level my friends in Germany are playing on in Killzone 3. That's definitely in German.

Isn't the Xbox region locked though?

You have to be careful. Some games do not have the English audio on disc. It's usually only a case with dialog heavy games like Mass Effect or Fable. Fable 2 had the English VO for download but they have taken that down for whatever reason forcing me to rebuying that game from the UK. You're safer with going that route on every game. It's really easy to import games. Amazon.de has UK versions of almost every game for the same price or less.

Pretty much this.

And even if the games have multilanguage support it might not even be English (looking at you Skate 1 and some other EA games where I had to deal with French when the console was set to English, so I only had the choice between the really terrible German dub or a language which I hardly speak...)

Edit: And probably also worth mentioning is the fact that by buying the UK version you also avoid the risk to get one of the "famous" German low violence versions.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I went to Gamespot, and they said that the games are most likely in German. So I will have to find another solution.

@harlechquinn: @coinmatze: Do you live in Germany? Have you tried importing games? I'm thinking about buying from zavvi.com or play.com, but I don't know if there are import taxes or not? I think they are sent from the UK, and that is in the EU. So I suppose it should be no trouble to import games.

Yeah, found this "Import duty and taxes are due when importing goods into Germany from outside of the EU" Source.

But you guys have tried importing games?

Thanks for the help.

I would advise avoiding Zavvi as much as possible. They're horrific, only site I've bought to offline that I refuse to buy from again. You'll often order something and have to wait weeks for it to be sent out even if it was listed as "in stock" when you order it. That's not even relating to importing directly as I'm in the UK but I've had several bad experiences with them.

@mijati: Oh, wow. That sucks. Thanks for the heads up! Guess I'll avoid that site then.

@foggel:

Most German versions have the English VOs on the disc, though larger games, such as Mass Effect, Fable, Fallout - pretty much all big RPGs do not. There's just not enough space on the disc. Some select few, Fable 2 comes to mind, let players download the original English VOs from Xbox Live.

Just buy games from Amazon UK or something along the lines. It's what everybody with half a brain does in Germany. Cheaper, uncensored, and you'll have all original English VOs you'll ever want. All you need is a shipping address and a credit/debit card.

Zavvi can have some pretty atrocious shipping delivery times, I once waited a whole month for a game. I've heard good things about them too though, so it might depend on where you live. I'd also recommend shop.to, they are usually pretty good and fast. I'm pretty sure there are no taxes for Zavvi, never used play.com so I can't tell but if their headquarter is in the UK it shouldn't be a problem. If anything else fails, Amazon.co.uk usually has pretty decent prices and shipping times as well. However (I'm not from Germany but from Austria so somebody from there needs to confirm this) I'm pretty sure there is an additional fee for games that are 18+ because, well it's Germany. Not sure if this applies for imports too.

Like I said, I recommend just going through Amazon.de. Completely hasslefree. If you search Amazon for a game and add "UK" you will almost always get a result. Shipping is usually around 3€. Shopto.net is good but I like the convenience of clicking three buttons on Amazon. Abendlaender is right about the 18+ fee but it has rarely come up for me, only when I go through official Amazon shipping. It's 5€ and the package has to be received in person with ID check and everything.

There are many shops in the UK you can easily import games from. My friends and I have been doing this for years and never had any problems. It sometimes takes a while until the games arrive (Royal mail seems a little bit slow for my taste) but that's all. Best thing is, thanks to the strong Euro you will get the games much cheaper in the UK.

@foggel: I import on a regular basis from the UK (can't even remember when I bought a game in a German store...). With amazon.co.uk you are pretty much on the save side when it comes to customs.

But what you should keep in my if you are importing from UK sources that they have to send the stuff from the British mainland, because some of the import stores operate from the Channel Islands (mainly Guernsey and Jersey) and as these Islands are not part of the customs union, stuff which will be send from where might/will go through customs and you have to pay at least 19% VAT extra and depending on the goods and if the purchase price (and yes, German custom will add the shipping costs to the total) exceeds a certain limit (I think it's €120 at the moment, but not entirely sure...) you might have to pay the import duty as well.

Try play.com. I believe it has free eu shipping. No importing just buying online then.

On PS3 I can set the game language to english by setting the system language to english. So far it always worked for me. As I understand there are no (or rarely?) specific german versions of a game. The games are EU version and they include UK English, German, French, ...

Perhaps this is different with the limited space on Xbox due to DVD instead of Bluray. I you want to be save just buy directly from amazon.co.uk. They ship to germany - absolutely hassle free - and most of the time they are even cheaper then on amazon.de. Even with increased shipping costs. Btw. I did it the other way round: I bought about 50% of my games as UK version (they are cheaper) and played in them in german language.

Thanks again for all the help.

This thread is one of the top results when googling "english games germany" so guess I'll update it incase anyone else is in the same situation.

I ordered from amazon.co.uk, and three business days later it arrived in my mailbox. No trouble at all.

This is not true. German releases of gory games generally have the graphic violence turned down a notch and they're pretty big on dubbing.

Just because German is included as an option in the normal European release doesnt mean that that version of the game is released in Germany. You have to remember that people also speak German in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, ... Having German as a language option makes perfect sense for a general European release.

Yeah Germany has some weird anti-violence laws for games (e.g. blood must not be red, so often green is used). But as far as I know those "special cut" german versions mostly include the english language - at least all of the games I purchased did.

As proposed before: The way to go is to buy UK verison from amazon.co.uk. Its cheaper, guaranteed includes english and no green blood.