Sony ISN’T Closing the PS3 & PS Vita Store… Anymore

Those of you still kicking the dust off of your PlayStation 3 or your PlayStation Vita can rejoice today. Sony has backtracked on its plan to shutter the online stores for these devices after listening to user feedback. Honestly, I’m very surprised at this, as Sony typically do things their own way, and if they say they were closing it and moving on, then that’s 100% what we all expected them to do.

PS3 & PS Vita Store

There’s one catch though, the PSP commerce functionality is closing on July 2nd, but given that it came out in 2005, I’d say it’s had a damn good run. The VITA is now 10 years old, so who knows, maybe we’ll get another five years out of that too.

The public has spoken and Sony has listened. For those with a library of digital-online games or looking to purchase things from the store, this really is fantastic news.

You can read Sony’s full statement from the PlayStation Blog below.

“Recently, we notified players that PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita devices was planned to end this summer.

Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here. So today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices. PSP commerce functionality will retire on July 2, 2021 as planned.

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.

I’m glad that we can keep this piece of our history alive for gamers to enjoy, while we continue to create cutting-edge new game worlds for PS4, PS5, and the next generation of VR.

Thank you for sharing your feedback with us – we’re always listening and appreciate the support from our PlayStation community.”

Thoughts?

How many of you still use these devices, as I haven’t seen one in use for quite some time now, short of a small online community that runs homebrew stuff. Plus, retro gamers that I do know don’t bother with the online store element, as they prefer physical releases. So, really how many people do you think will REALLY bother with the webstore? Hmmm.