Last month, Sony made the disappointing announcement that it was going to shut down the PlayStation Store on its legacy platforms, making it impossible for PS3, PSP, and PS Vita owners to make new game purchases. This resulted in widespread backlash, with many criticizing Sony for seemingly not caring about game preservation, as a number of digital-only titles would be lost forever. However, Sony has listened to the feedback and has decided to reverse course on its plans to shut down the PS3 and PS Vita PlayStation Stores.
PlayStation President and CEO Jim Ryan confirmed today that it is no longer going to shut down the PlayStation Store for PS3 or PS Vita, though the PSP PlayStation Store will still be shut down on July 2, 2021 as previously announced. Ryan stated that it it is clear that PlayStation "made the wrong decision" when it announced its plans to shut down the PS3 and Vita PlayStation Stores. Ryan also offered further insight as to why this controversial decision was made in the first place.
According to Ryan, the idea behind shutting down the PS3 and PS Vita PlayStation Stores was so that it could focus its resources on newer devices like PS4 and its recently released PlayStation 5 console. However, the reaction to the announcement showed Sony that its fans are "incredibly passionate" about being able to purchase classic games on the PS3 and PS Vita, and so it has found a solution to continue operations for those storefronts.
"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," Ryan said. It's possible that the PS3 and PS Vita PlayStation Stores will shut down eventually, but it doesn't seem like something that fans need to worry about for now.
In the meantime, hopefully this means Sony will address some of the lingering issues that have been plaguing PS3 and PS Vita PlayStation Store users. Some PS3 users have run into error codes when trying to make new purchases or re-download games, with these problems seemingly cropping up after Sony announced its plans to shut down the PlayStation Store on its legacy platforms. There are workarounds to the issues, but an actual fix has yet to be implemented.
As for the PSP PlayStation Store still being shut down, that may be disappointing news to those who never upgraded to a Vita, but it's worth pointing out that the vast majority of digital PSP content is also available on Vita, so it's not nearly as big of an issue.