About a month ago, Sony said it planned to shut down the PlayStation Store on some of its older systems later this winter. But today, Sony decided to reverse course and will now continue to support the PS Store on the PS3 and PS Vita for the foreseeable future.
Sony’s change of heart comes as an important lifeline for people with older Sony consoles. The company was originally planning to remove support for the PlayStation Store on July 2, which would have prevented people from buying new games or video content digitally after that date.
“Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here,” Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan announced in a blog post. “So today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices.”
Ryan explained that Sony’s reasoning for shutting down the PS Store was spurred by potential commerce support issues for older platforms and a desire to focus resources on more recent devices like the PS4 and PS5, where Sony says “a majority of our gamers are playing.”
It’s important to note that while Sony will continue supporting the PS Store on PS3 and Vita, Sony will continue with its shutdown of the PS Store on the PSP, so if there are any PSP games you want to buy digitally from Sony, you’d better do it before July 2. After July 2, PSP owners will still be able to download content previously purchased from the PS Store, but will no longer be able to buy new content.
It’s unclear how much longer Sony will continue to support the PS Store for PS3 and PS Vita owners, but I’m betting the company will keep it going for at least another year — or until the supply of new PS5s starts to stabilise.
And while Sony will continue to support the PS Store on older devices, back in early March Sony also announced that it will stop selling video content on the PS Store in August. It will continue to sell games, but anyone hoping to buy TV shows or movies digitally on a PlayStation will need to turn to a different content provider like Apple or Google.