At the end of March, Sony announced the PlayStation 3, PS Vita, and PSP Stores would close in the summer, causing widespread outcry. Sony appears to have listened to the concerns of customers and developers and has now announced the PS3 and Vita stores will no longer close. The PSP store will still close as planned on July 2, however.
The closure of the three stores would have seen the disappearance of more than 2000 digital exclusive games among the three platforms, and that didn’t count any of the PS Vita games due to be released over the coming months. A statement from Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan admitted the company had made “the wrong decision” and would no longer be closing the two stores, so the vast majority of those games will now be saved. The full statement reads:
Recently, we notified players that PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita devices was planned to end this summer.
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.
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 playi...