Xbox One games are priced too high in India - it's something even Microsoft agrees with, but for early adopters, digital deals took away the sting of the pricing of physical games. For the first year of the Xbox One's life in India, we were treated to a number of digital deals that made the high cost of Internet well worth the price of admission. Now though, pricing of digital games is a lot higher than before, and in a lot of cases, almost double of what they were a year ago. And there's the fact that other regions like Canada and Hong Kong tend to have a better price point for most games, while the United States has certain games that may not make it here - all this makes buying games in India starts to look downright depressing.
For example: Elite: Dangerous was only available in India only after it was out of Microsoft's Early Access program. You can get around these problems by buying your games from other regions, and you might get good deals along the way too. This guide tells you how to get your digital games for cheap, and it might come in handy considering there's another end of year sale on the Xbox One that will take place in less than a week.
There are two parts to this. First, you have to change the location of your Xbox One, and then you can buy download codes from the correct places.
(Also see: How to Buy US Digital PSN Games in India)
Change the location of your Xbox One
Before changing your location, you need to know where the best deals are. You can track game prices before switching regions.
Fire up the Settings app, choose System and select Language & Location.
Select the location of your choice. Regions like Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore have a surprisingly good pricing advantage over India, thanks to the worsening Rupee-Dollar relationship.
After selecting your location you'll be prompted to reboot your Xbox One. Now the store will show prices in the currency of the region you've chosen.
Purchasing games
When you've switched your location to the US, simply log onto Amazon.com. Create an account if you don't have one.
You will need to provide a US shipping address. You can't get away with a fictitious one. You can provide a random address based on US landmarks, information for which can be found a search away, or if you use a global shipping service like Borderline or ShopAndShip, you can use the US address provided to you as a legitimate shipping address.
Head over to the Xbox section of Amazon's digital games, and pick out the games you want. Indian credit and debit cards work fine for purchase as long as you have saved a US address. You should receive your codes almost immediately. These are just a string of numbers, so you don't need to get them shipped. Claim the code on your console via the store section or on your browser.
If you selected a region other than the US, you can get prepaid cards via PlayAsia for countries like Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, and the like and you can use your India address without a hitch. Again, you get a code that you can use on your console without a hitch.
As for your previous region? Don't worry, you can always revert to it by simply changing it in the Xbox One menus. In our experience, anything we bought on the US store carried over when we switched back to India as our location, so you can enjoy your games without any problems.
Did this method work for you in buying cheaper digital Xbox One games? Let us know via the comments.
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