What you need to know
- The PS3, PSP, and PlayStation Vita are three older, retired Sony consoles, but you could still buy games for them on digital storefronts.
- A report surfaced earlier this month that the game stores for those consoles would be shut down this year.
- Sony confirmed it's closing these stores on July 2 (for PSP and PS3) and August 27 (for PS Vita)
Well it's official: Sony is closing the PlayStation Stores on PS3, PSP, and PS Vita. We heard reports that it was happening, and Sony has now confirmed that the rumors were true. It's officially shutting down the stores on those three consoles, meaning that, after this summer, you'll no longer be able to buy or download new games from those consoles.
The confirmation comes from the PlayStation support site. The notice board has an entry on the store closures that reads: "We are closing PlayStation™Store on PlayStation®3 consoles on 2nd July 2021 and on PlayStation®Vita devices on 27th August 2021. Additionally, the remaining purchase functionality for PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable) will also retire on 2nd July 2021." Users will still be able to download games and media they already own on those consoles, but won't be able to purchase anything new.
The first sign that the Stores were being shuttered, other than the report earlier this month, came when ResetEra users discovered this weekend they couldn't access an old web workaround that let them access an older version of the Store on the web. Sony rolled out a new store last year that removed all of these games from the roster, as well as the wishlist feature.
But still, there are several games available on these consoles that you can't get anywhere else. For example, not only are there several excellent Vita games, but the Vita is also the only official way to play several PS1 classics digitally. Sony still has yet to provide a way for gamers to really access or play its older titles, and simply offering remakes for a handful of titles isn't enough. An optimistic view is that Sony will eventually offer these older titles to play via some revamped version of its PlayStation Now service, but we've yet to hear any hint of that from Sony itself.
