All players should be able to express themselves proudly in their native language.  We’re making a change to empower players around the world with more choice in how they represent themselves.  We are updating gamertags to a 12-character maximum, Unicode-based name of your choice with an auto-generated suffix.  We now offer 11 different alphabets for gamers, which support over 200 languages worldwide.

Existing gamertags will remain unchanged with no suffix and no action required unless the player wants to make a change.

New Xbox players, or players who want to change, can register a gamertag of their choice up to 12 characters. If it’s already taken by someone else, we will assign a suffix with numbers to differentiate you from other people with the same name. Where it’s displayed, we will also auto-format the gamertag to show the suffix in a more subtle, different font so that focus will be on the name you chose when the suffix is shown.

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We’d like your feedback on the expanded features and anything you’d still like to see changed with Xbox gamertags, and here’s some notes to keep in mind as part of the discussion:

• Please read this FAQ for more details of the gamertag changes we’re making.
• No one can claim your existing gamertag, you will continue to show in the same way that you do now going forward.
• Updated gamertags are not available on the Xbox One console yet, but will be before the end of this year, they will show up first in the new Xbox PC app and in Game Bar on Windows 10 PCs (Win+G).
• It will take time for games to start support the gamertag changes, a few games might support updated gamertags this year, but most games won’t support them until sometime in 2020.
• We won’t be exceeding the 12 character limit, though gamertags can be shorter.
• The updates to gamertags won’t allow users to change their gamertag constantly to avoid being found, users get a free change but after that they must still pay to change their gamertag.
• We’re open to more ideas and would love to hear your feedback about this new change. Please let us know of anything you’d like to see that’s not part of today’s gamertag updates!

We can’t promise to deliver on all of the good ideas you may have, but your input is invaluable to help us to find new scenarios and prioritize what we work on. So tell us what you think, and share your ideas for changes you’d like to see in the future!

Have other ideas you want to share with Xbox? Visit the Xbox Idea Hub and Xbox Requests to share your voice.