Sony will be winding down support for messaging between the PlayStation 3 and its later consoles on June 30, 2020. An update shared on the company's Japanese website announced the feature's removal earlier this week.
PS3 owners will no longer be able to send messages or friend requests to players on the PlayStation Vita or PS4, but PS3-to-PS3 messaging will remain functional for the foreseeable future. Game alerts and messages from the PS3 will also be removed from the PlayStation Messages app.
Aside from losing its cross-platform messaging, the rest of the PlayStation 3's integration with the PlayStation Network appears to be staying intact for now. Sony has not announced any other changes to the platform's other online features, like downloading games from the PlayStation Store or connecting to titles that still have multiplayer servers up and running.
While Sony appears to be keeping the rest of the PS3's online functions intact, owners of the older console are still losing out on a useful, if niche, feature to keep in touch with their friends on the PS4. It's likely that the company is winding down cross-generational support between the consoles in an effort to make way for the upcoming PlayStation 5.
The PS3's messaging features are much more basic than those of the PlayStation systems that came after it, but as the first Sony console to launch with support for the PlayStation Network, it still gave PS3 owners a way to communicate at the system level that wasn't present on the PS2. With nearly 14 years in active use, the original iteration of PSN paved the way for the Vita and the PlayStation 4's more streamlined iterations.
With seven years of chatting between the PS3 and the PS4 before Sony pulled the plug, it's safe to say current-gen PS4 owners won't have to worry about their console's networking features getting discontinued for a good while, even with the release of the PS5 looming on the horizon. Players can safely bet that there will be some degree of cross-platform communication between the consoles, especially with the next-gen PlayStation having confirmed backward compatibility with most PS4 games.
Source: PlayStation Japan