Why do so many DVDs offer languages in French or Spanish but no others?

Question

Especially Francais, almost all have French but never German or Russian or anything.

Answer 1

It's a marketing decision; DVD are encoded by "regions". So "Region 1" include mostly Canada and the US that's why the have French, Spanish and English. The other Regions are for Europe, Asian and Africa so they include subtitles for those market depending on where they will be sold. So when they sell in Germany they have German subtitles (or audio) for that market. In a way it makes no sense to add 10 other languages to a DVD when most of the people only don't use them; besides there is a limited storage room on a DVD.

It's also an anti p****y trick because  Region-1 DVD players can only play DVD encoded for Region-1 for example. So if you sell illegal US DVD to Germany, movie companies know they wont play on those German DVD players.

Answer 2

As stated already, its a zone by zone marketing thing. I live in China and most DVDs include subtitles for Chinese (simplified and Traditional), Spanish, French, Russian, Indonesian, Thai, Malay, tagulu, English, etc.

in terms of dubbing usually only Mandarin and Cantonese... it really depends on where they ripped it from!