When Sony announced its decision to close the PS3, PSP and PS Vita stores, the overriding reaction was “why?”. Surely, if people want to buy games their old consoles they should be allowed to, right?
Well, thankfully, Sony has come to its senses and has reversed its decision, with the top brass Jim Ryan admitting “it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here”, having listened to feedback from the PlayStation community.
As such, the PS3 and PS Vita versions of the PlayStation Store will remain open indefinitely. However Sony is still planning to retire the PSP store on July 2 2021.
In the post on the PlayStation Blog, Ryan writes: “When we initially came to the decision to end purchasing support for PS3 and PS Vita, it was born out of a number of factors, including commerce support challenges for older devices and the ability for us to focus more of our resources on newer devices where a majority of our gamers are playing on.
“We see now that many of you are incredibly passionate about being able to continue purchasing classic games on PS3 and PS Vita for the foreseeable future, so I’m glad we were able to find a solution to continue operations.”
Related: Best PS4 games
The explanation from Ryan somewhat answers our initial confusion about why Sony would shut down the stores. He says it’s about challenges of supporting older devices and wishing to focus resources on where most PlayStation gamers are at.
However despite that, it’s clear Sony has realised it has a duty to keep those games available to those who a) love their legacy consoles or b) aren’t quite in a position to upgrade their collections to PS4 and PS5.
Sony’s decision gives gamers and extra time to get their hands on PS3 and PS Vita titles. However, we’d advise gamers to snap up as many of those PSP titles between now and next July.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.