How to use the New Zealand trick to play Hogwarts Legacy early on Xbox

Hogwarts Legacy allows their Deluxe Edition owners a 72-hour early access to play the game before owners of the Standard Edition gain access to the game on Feb. 10. This allows the Deluxe Edition players to play the game fresh on Feb. 7, enabling them to get in more hours of playtime thus avoiding several potential spoilers that the Standard Edition players might come across.

Taking this concept a step further, owners of Hogwarts Legacy on the Xbox platforms can play the game a day earlier than expected, on Feb. 6, provided they use a simple trick exclusive to their devices. Players call this the New Zealand trick because it involves changing your location to New Zealand to gain access to the game even earlier than the early access period, provided you are a Deluxe Edition owner. This is how you can achieve that.

How to use the New Zealand trick to play Hogwarts Legacy early

• Boot up your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S and navigate to the device’s Settings menu.
• From here, select the System settings option and head to the Location menu.
• This is a dropdown menu that allows you to select a location of your choosing. Choose New Zealand from the list.
• Then head to the Language settings option and change your Language Region to English (New Zealand).

And that’s it. Simply restart your system and the region should be successfully changed to New Zealand. The reason we’re doing this is due to the difference in time zones. Since New Zealand’s time zone gains access to Hogwarts Legacy‘s 72-hour access period before other time zones, switching to that region will allow players from other regions to gain access to the game at the same time as well.

Unfortunately for PlayStation owners, this trick only works for the Xbox versions of the game since the region rules for PlayStation 5 are stricter and involve players needing to create a new account which causes more problems than it is worth.