PlayStation reverses course on PS3, Vita store closure

PSP will still close this summer

Last month, Sony confirmed a report that it would be closing the online storefront for PlayStation 3, Vita, and PSP. Today, the company announced it would no longer be closing two of those stores.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said in a statement on the PlayStation Blog that while Sony had recently planned to close the stores this summer, upon further reflection it was clear that it made the wrong decision. The PlayStation Store for PS3 and Vita will stay operational, though PSP commerce functionality will still 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 games are playing on,” said Ryan.

“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.”

This is certainly a positive for people who want to hold onto their old games, or might want to explore what they missed out on at some point in the future. Getting old games backed up was already proving to be a bit of a slog too, so having two of these storefronts stay online and operational is rad. (Sorry for those holding out hope for the PSP, though.)