Sony Backtracks, PS3 & Vita Stores to Remain Online

Two weeks ago, Sony Interactive announced the imminent closure of the Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita stores later this year. Now, thanks to a strong public backlash, they have decided to reconsider their decision to sunset the stores. Those stores will remain online for the time being.

Sony Interactive Entertainment President Jim Ryan posted the news just today, walking back the announcement.

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 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.
I’m glad that we can keep this piece of our history alive for gamers to enjoy, while we continue to create cutting-edge new game worlds for PS4, PS5, and the next generation of VR.
Thank you for sharing your feedback with us – we’re always listening and appreciate the support from our PlayStation community.

The original closure news drew public outcry from people concerned with game preservation and from players who simply wanted an option to revisit classic games in the future.

As good news as this is, the reversal does not include continued support for the PSP store. That platform will shut down as planned on July 2^nd, 2021.

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Gene Turnbow

President of Krypton Media Group, Inc., radio personality and station manager of SCIFI.radio. Part writer, part animator, part musician, part illustrator, part programmer, part entrepreneur – all geek.

Gene Turnbow