Bet the points system doesn't sound like a bad idea now.

Come on, it doesn't take that long to translate a page or five in the necessary languages, and resources can be hosted on remote servers. Most territories can understand English anyway, so really if the infrastructure works in one territory it should work in all the others - save for one thing. The local currency needed to purchase items.

Which you still need access to in order to do "exchange rates" into the points systems that Microsoft and Nintendo are using. It's all about the languages, always has been in Europe/PAL territories/whatever we're called today.

Yeah, but I wouldn't have thought it would have taken that long to translate such pages? Correct me if I'm wrong obviously, I don't have a PS3 so can't exactly see how much translating might be required... or the logistics of translating in general for that matter.

I doubt very much it's the currency or website translation thats taking the time - as always it'll be Legal...trying to work as many local fingers into the pie as possible. Same stuff is happening on Live too...just look at Arcade Ninja Turtles.

Well, based on my experience when I worked for DHL on websites for about 20 different countries, the issue isn't getting the translations done. The issue is that a lot of languages have longer words than English, German for example, but I seem to remember that the average longest is Malaysian. Also many languages have wider lettering than English, Arabic script for example is quite wide on each character compared to the height.

All of the above means that an area set aside for text in English may not hold the same text translated into other languages due to word length and character width affecting the word wrapping. You usually have to allow for much taller areas on your pages.

With the design of the Playstation Store, that may affect the ability to have two rows of products, or they may have to drop the size of the featured product banner at the top, or even lose the sidebar all together (a wider area for text means less wrapping, of course).

Couple all that with issues like getting a clearing system in place for credit card transactions and, as Hypnotoad points out, legal wrangling, and you have a recipe for delays. You may even come up against technical issues that prevent the stores from opening - no online clearing system for example.