The PS Vita, PS3 Digital Stores Will Not Close This Summer

Sony has reversed their decision to close the PS3 and PS Vita stores this summer, but the PSP store will still officially shut down as scheduled. The news comes straight from SIE President and CEO Jim Ryan through a post on the PlayStation Blog. 

Ryan referenced fan feedback regarding the initial news to close the digital stores last month. 

“It’s clear that we made the wrong decision here,” Ryan said. “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.”

This is a very welcome reversal for all Sony fans and keeping these games readily available. Since the first announcement of the stores closing, fans have actively voiced their disappointment on social media and grabbed up PS3, Vita, and PSP games before they disappeared (here’s a list of great indies to get even in light of this news). 

Though the loss of the PSP store still looms, acting as the death knell for the portable, at the very least, there is still a small PSP library available through the PS Vita and PS3 stores. 

Ryan shed further light on the decision to reverse the store closures and said that other PlayStation products, at least in the eyes of Sony, required greater attention that could be reallocated from the PS3, Vita, and PSP. 

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.”

It’s nice to know that Sony is listening to its fanbase, though it is still troubling that these closures were possibilities in the first place. Rather than continue to live with the worry that these stores will disappear, it’s clear that Sony needs a grander backwards compatibility solution, just as they do with PS Now.