Should SE make a language spoken census?

[Antonio_Xul]

That is their official language.

What I meant by that is that there were Portuguese speakers, period. Everyone knows Brazilians speak Portuguese.

[alimdia]

They have Spanish translators for what? Because after a lot of people asking for a spanish translation, till now, Square Enix didn't care about Spanish translation.

For this https://xmail.square-enix.com/fe/vie...s/email16.html

Lately I've been receiving emails from SE in Spanish because of my usual IP address, basically they translate news and promos to Spanish to lure people, but omit the fact that there's no Spanish UI.

The free trial website is also available in Spanish, but again omitting the fact that Spanish is not supported, also this one website is not translated by SE, they mirror Wikia, but the emails and probably press releases are translated by SE.

http://www.ffxiv-freetrial.com/sp/

[FabricioRF]

What I meant by that is that there were Portuguese speakers, period. Everyone knows Brazilians speak Portuguese.

Some people think we speak spanish.

[Mirili]

What I meant by that is that there were Portuguese speakers, period. Everyone knows Brazilians speak Portuguese.

so you were surprised to see brazilians speaking their native tongue well ok

[Niwashi]

This is why a census or survey should be made to see what languages are spoken within the game. I've ran into many Brazilian players talking Portuguese which was something I never expected, but there they are. A survey should be made to see what languages to support.

One thing I learned recently is that the United States has the 2nd largest group of Spanish speakers in the world behind only Mexico and surpassing Spain & Colombia. That's a huge market opportunity right there they are missing out on. With Mexico & Spain alone would be good enough reason to add Spanish, but you got Latin America and Spanish Speaking U. S. citizens, too.

It's hard for a survey to really indicate when another language's support is needed, though. Taking that same example of Spanish speakers in the U.S., there are certainly a great many Americans who speak Spanish as their primary language. But among them, how many also speak English fluently, or if not yet fluently are at least trying to learn it? (Some of the later may use games to provide a fun way of practicing it.) In Mexico, the proportion of Spanish speakers who also speak English is probably lower than among the Spanish speakers in the US (where it can be really hard to get a decent job without being able to speak English well).

SE would gain more market share by catering to groups who speak another language exclusively, or at least without also speaking any of the game's supported languages. Those people, however, are ones who aren't likely to have the game in its current version, because they'd be unable to read its dialog, instructions, or menus, making it very hard to play. So a survey among people who have the game won't include the people so excluded from it by its current language options.

[Antonio_Xul]

Well, the original intent of this thread was to have a survey to see the percentage of who speaks what in each server so new & old players can choose which server best suits their language needs. Let's just keep it that. If they want to support a new language, that is cool, but in the mean time, we do need to at least give players an idea of the language population in each server.

[Chessala]

Well, I can tell you from experience that translating games into Spanish/Portuguese usually does not pay off for a company on the long run. The MMO company I work for has translated many games in the past to Spanish/Brazilian Portuguese (Brazilian Portuguese is actually quite different from continental Portuguese so it should be distinguished) and these were usually the first territories to be closed because they did not make enough revenue to justify the translation cost.

That is true for F2P games and should be true even more for P2P games. Why? Simple, people that really want to play the game will be doing so already and pay their sub. There is not much additional revenue (aka mog station, merchandise etc) that can be expected from these regions.

[Noxifer]

so you were surprised to see brazilians speaking their native tongue well ok

Well... I don't speak my own native tongue inside the game. I use English. I'm pretty surprised when I run into another Nordic player and see them either use their native language in an official chat (say, yell, shout etc) or have search comments in their native language. Admittedly, I doubt there are anywhere near as many Nordic players as there are Brazilian, and that's not even one country but five, but I can still see how it can be a surprise if it's not something you see on a daily basis. (Or if it is on a daily basis and you know it's not the same two-three players, it can be a surprise regarding how many there are.) *shrugs*

[papichulo123]

no the only census they should do is how many accounts log in and in which servers. anything else is a waste of time

[Lexia]

Well maybe they need to post in the correct section then. English forums use English there are also Japanese, Français and Deutsches sections that use those languages.