Xbox – Everything on Xbox One “taking too long” and no controller pairing

First off, let me share who I am and what Xbox One I own. I live in Luxembourg, a country where Xbox Live has never been supported and most likely never will due to its small population. My Live profile is bound to the UK marketplace after I migrated it after long years of struggling with support from the German marketplace.

I bought a Day One Edition from Amazon.de, so, in essence, I own an imported Xbox One. All services on the one are tied to your profile. So if your profile is tied to the UK marketplace, you will see ads, movie recommendations, application recommendations, etc, for the UK marketplace. If you are tied to the Norwegian marketplace than the worst thing that could happen is that the feed supplying this information is not available. Should you have your profile tied to a different region, like me, than everything is just fine except for the occasional content that is region locked (although no Xbox One content is to date to my knowledge, speaking from experience with the 360) and you may need to go through a VPN to get it.

So all in all, I see no problem with importing an Xbox One. The console should work just fine and if it is officially launched in Norway, I am pretty sure it will just start loading all the content from the Norwegian marketplace if your account is tied to it. The reason why the console was not released was market focus and console saturation, not some technical issues. They simply wanted to flood their major markets with consoles.

I say, go for it. You will anyway have a warranty and right to return the goods if you purchase online, will you not? I am a bit fishy about the Norwegian law. I think that things are looking pretty good and that if you want it, you should get it.

Update Since I have posted this, I have run into some problems. It seems that payment methods are subjected to more scrutiny than before the One was released. Even purchasing on the 360 has become less forgiving. For example, using PayPal to make a purchase on a UK account while residing in Luxembourg has resulted in a payment block after three failed attempts. I had to contact the advocacy team to get it unlocked. Furthermore, they seem not very understanding of the problem and just scold you for trying to make purchases out of region.

However, using a gift card to charge money onto my account seemed to work just fine. It seems like that is the method I will have to use. Unfortunately, this might mean that I can't benefit from several services such as video streaming as they, to my knowledge, require an active payment method on your account.

When Microsoft releases firmware updates, these updates occasionally include improvements for your controllers. Unlike the Xbox One updates, which are applied automatically, controllers need to be updated manually. Headsets too are often updated so keep them plugged into the controller while you update. Here's a paragraph from the Microsoft Xbox One website about the controller update procedure. Follow this and see if it solves your problem:

To download the update, connect a controller to your Xbox One with a USB cable. Keep any headsets connected to the controller. Connect to Xbox Live. Press the Menu. Go to Settings > Devices & accessories and select the controller. If you have multiple controllers attached, you can select Buzz – which will cause the selected controller to vibrate. Then select Update to download the new firmware to the controller attached via the USB cable, and the screen will show the “Updating controller…” progress screen. When you see the “Controller updated” screen, press B to go back to the Devices & accessories main page. Reselect the controller.