Sony Reverses Decision To Close PS3 And Vita Stores

Three weeks after announcing their intent to shut down the PSN store for the PS3 and PS Vita, Sony has walked back that decision. In a blog post, Sony Interactive Entertainment President & CEO Jim Ryan addressed the community after taking this time to reconsider the move.

“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.”

Ryan says that the decision to close the stores was initially made due to “commerce support challenges” for the older hardware, as well as a desire to focus more of Sony’s resources and efforts on the newer hardware that the majority of fans are on. What changed their mind though was the response from the PlayStation community.

“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.”

Although the PSP won’t be getting an extension, Sony deciding to reverse course and keep the PS3 and Vita stores open is a move that not many were expecting. When you consider that many players no longer use those platforms, it’s understandable why the company was ready to end support for them. But since there’s no alternative way to access those games legally (if at all), it’s great that Sony is allowing them to live on for players even longer.

The next step is for Sony to provide a way to play those games through some form of backwards compatibility. One can only hope that this is a sign of the company moving towards that goal.