Sony was in some hot water over some of their decisions lately, mainly the news that Vita and PS3 games would no longer be purchaseable on Sony's digital marketplace. However, after tons of negative feedback, Sony has reversed course, announcing today that purchases will continue to be available.
As we reported at the end of March, Sony was pulling the stores for its legacy consoles, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita. While users could still redownload games already purchased, there would be no way to buy new games digitally for those systems come July.
However, response to the news was definitely met with mixed reaction, with many gamers pointing out that these legacy markets were one of the only real ways to discover hidden gems as well as preserve the legacy console's gaming history. It seems Sony has listened, as this morning it was announced they were reversing the decision to pull the stores later this year.
"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. "
Sony's Jim Ryan cited the reasons why the company was pulling the stores was down to a "number of factors." Ryan mentions the desired to focus their "resources on newer devices" where the company sees the majority of its users play, as well as "commerce support challenges for older devices."
PS Store Update: Players will be able to continue to purchase games on PS3 and PS Vita: https://t.co/hLTznJeiML pic.twitter.com/5Idy1Modcb
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) April 19, 2021
"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," Ryan says in the blog post.
