Sony Backpedals: PS3 and Vita Stores Will Stay Online to Purchase Games From

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s President & CEO Jim Ryan posted on the PlayStation Blog that they will be doing a bit of backpedaling after the announcement that the PlayStation Store will be shutting on for PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable.

In the post, Mr. Ryan states, “Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here.” and confirms that they will keep the PlayStation Store operation for PS3 and PS Vita devices for now. However, PSP commerce functionality will end on July 2, 2021, as previously planned.

He adds, “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 playing on. 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 seems to be the right decision as many gamers still play these consoles to this day and shutting down these stores would limit their availability to certain games, especially ones that don’t have a physical release or release on another platform.

However, it’s not mentioned if developers will still be able to publish their games to the store or if they will only leave the stores open to purchase games from. This morning, Top Hat Studios announced that they will be publishing what could be the final Vita game later this month. Also, we aren’t completely sure what will happen to the PSP games available on the Vita PlayStation Store for purchase. Only time will tell.