Early adopters of Windows Phone 7 probably know the pain they endured if they ever wanted to change the locale of their Markeplace. Indeed, on Windows Phone 7 the Marketplace would use the country you associated with your Live account which is a permanent setting. Users couldn’t change this unless they created a different Live ID.
Well now WPCentral reports that this is not the case any longer in Windows Phone 8 and folks that want to change their Store location can easily do so. It no longer matters where your Live/Microsoft/Xbox account is registered, what matters is the Country/Region setting you select upon activating the phone. So for example even if your Live address is in the UK you can just select US as the default region and you will be using the US marketplace. Of course you might have some problems with paid apps due to your credit card not being registered in the US, but free apps will work just fine.
What’s even better is that you can actually change this location setting and restart your phone and start using a different Store altogether. You don’t need to hard reset the phone and you’re not hindered by your Live account being in a different region.
This may be some really good news to folks living outside of the US who want to have access to some specific apps, or folks that travel a lot and want to use local apps. In either case it’s really good news and we’re really happy with this addition.
Source: WPCentral | Image via WIndows Phone Store
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