So I'm seeing more and more threads with quite hard to read titles from our oriental friends. Is this a temporary snafu? If it isn't, how are we supposed to review these games? If it is, does this mean the Japanese and English markets are separate? Will my game be available in Japan? What if I make a Japanese localization - do I put it in peer review here or in the Japanese localised version of the Creators Club Online?

You are not expected to review in anything but the languages you speak. In fact the system won't even let you download games unless its availalbe in one of your languages (and changing you language to 'fib' will mess up the system badly so don't do it... if you add a language and then do a review you give a review credit in that language even though you didn't really speak it).

I recommend you use the 'My languages' filter on the review and playtest screen. That will remove the Japansese only games.

You can put your game in Japan without translating, though I don't know how well it will sell. Adding a territory is easy and does not need a reveiw. Adding languages will require go go though a review in that language.

Ok but I mean erm depending on how prolific the Japanese are I can imagine my "unread threads" view to become quite unpleasant...

Yes unread threads are going to be a problem if you really want to keep it to 0 - use Nick's firefox script that he posted somewhere. There are actually Japanese forums which you can't see but the review/playtest ones are for everyone.

Yes it seems that Japanese creators can release untranslated games into other territories just as you can. Its going to be interesting how that plays out - there's several in review right now that have ALL the countries listed. You too can send your ENglish (or French, Spanish, Italian, German) games into any other country untranslated

And noone has considered how much this will suck? Interesting!

Its all pat of the exciting experiment... i know a lot of US folk are happy to play Japanses shooters even if they are not translated. There's a huge market for import games for example.

The ZMan:

i know a lot of US folk are happy to play Japanses shooters even if they are not translated. There's a huge market for import games for example.

QFT. I have a friend who is obsessed with shmups, and I've imported a few games myself. Should be interesting!

Can anybody explain why Japanese creators have a separate forum just for them? French, Italian and Spanish creators have been here from day one without the "right" to write in our language UNLESS you wrote it ALSO IN ENGLISH. I don't understand why there is such a different in threatment. Are Japanese special? (yes, I know their market is kinda huge)

The Japanese Microsoft subsidiary is far more heavily involved in the XNA process. My guess is that they commited to more (money/time/marketing etc etc than any of the other subsidiaries did and therefore are special. I know they have Japanese speaking Microsoft and MVP staff too.

I also wonder what the % of English speakers is in Japan compaed to the other countires.

The ZMan:

I also wonder what the % of English speakers is in Japan compaed to the other countires.

I was curious about that stuff too, and I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population

In my experience Wikipedia is quite accurate with non-pop culture and non-opinionated articles, so that should be good information.

Abel Garcia Plaza:

Can anybody explain why Japanese creators have a separate forum just for them? French, Italian and Spanish creators have been here from day one without the "right" to write in our language UNLESS you wrote it ALSO IN ENGLISH. I don't understand why there is such a different in threatment. Are Japanese special? (yes, I know their market is kinda huge)

The Zman is right... the Japanese team for XNA has committed multiple (5 currently) full-time staff to support, monitor and fully translate the creators web site. No other subsidiary has the resources or time to do that. Flip the site into Japanese and you'll see the site has translated content, news items, samples etc. The Redmond XNA team is not doing this work, it's the Japanese team prioritizing the creators web site. The forums exist in Japanese since they can be monitored appropriately by Microsoft employees.

Jenkmeister:

The Zman is right... the Japanese team for XNA has committed multiple (5 currently) full-time staff

Now I understand, but still feel like a second-class user of this site, to he honest.

By the way, for some reason I'm not getting e-mail notifications from forums. That's why my response was delayed. Who can I contact to solve this?

Go into your forum options and make sure receive emails & notification emails are set to yes.