PS3, PSP, and Vita Stores Closing in July

[Moonface]

If you needed a reason to hate digital gaming purchases, here you go. Apparently, "PSP’s and PS3’s stores are to be closed on July 2, while the PS Vita store will stay open until August 27. After those dates, you will no longer be able to purchase digital copies of games or DLC for any of the Sony consoles mentioned."

If this works how it did for when the Wii eShop was closed down, it could also mean that you can't even download games you purchased once the servers are closed.

I get there's a cost involved for having the servers up, but if you ever lose a copy of a digital game for one of those systems then you're going to have to hope you can find a physical copy. However, not every game on PS3 was given a physical release, so those games are just going to be forever lost to time.

If this report is true, I can't wait to see the backlash Sony gets when they announce this.

[Dragon Lord]

Excuse my language for a second...

Ah, fuck me.

Looks like I'm going to to have to look through the Vita's digital-only games and make sure I pick up the ones I want by the end of summer. Not sure if the PS3 has anything I want on it, but better check before it's too late.

Man, Sony sure knows how to ruin a good day.

[Moonface]

I'm hoping they at least allow access to purchases still. Otherwise for Vita that'll really suck because the internal storage sucks and the memory cards for it were never that cheap either. Just trying to store a chunky library could be costly just because of that, unless prices have gotten cheaper over time.

[Dragon Lord]

I doubt memory card prices for the Vita have went down. If anything, they've skyrocketed with the Vita and its memory cards no longer being in production.

But yeah, this is pretty brutal. I'm just hoping they don't end up cutting online/trophy support for it at the same time, because I still have a lot of Vita games I'd like to finish, and if trophies are disabled for them, it's going to really take a lot of fun out of them.

But yeah, I'm going to have to go through and make sure I got everything I want. Thankfully I have a lot of memory on my Vita, and not too many digital games, so I can store plenty of them.

Losing access to DLC sucks though, because that means I have to go through and buy any DLC I want for games before the shut down happens, or I don't get any of it. I don't think there's too many Vita games that have DLC outside of cosmetic stuff, but I'll have to double check just to be sure.

[Moonface]

I'll be surprised if Vita truly is included with this if/when the official announcement happens, considering games are still released for Vita.

I also hope this doesn't affect patches either. Otherwise it means that if you lose the patch data you're stuck with an outdated game. New releases also wouldn't be able to be patched either, which could encourage polished releases but on the other hand it might not.

[Karo]

Yeah I was expecting this to happen at some point honestly so I'm not too surprised but honestly this is a big reason why I wish game company would include the full game on the disc instead of purely digital if you aren't a pc gamer.

With steam your access is basically guaranteed as long as your game still runable but games on a console? Better hope the servers aren't taken down or it's a lot harder to get it on there and if it needs to be patched in? That's another can of worms.

[Moonface]

I've had a game that lacked patches already on PS3 now that I think about it. There was a Worms game I got that required a patch to have the campaign work, and I guess you can't get it anymore because the campaign is broken for me. It would suck if that ever becomes a widespread thing because a company doesn't want to host the patches on their platform anymore.

[Karo]

I'm sure there will be way to circumvent around it, but it won't be as convenient that for sure.

[Moonface]

The likely way would be emulation. However from what I've been reading today, it seems a lot of emulators are taking data directly from Sony's servers, which will be a problem if that becomes no longer possible from the store closures.

[Dragon Lord]

I'll be surprised if Vita truly is included with this if/when the official announcement happens, considering games are still released for Vita.

I also hope this doesn't affect patches either. Otherwise it means that if you lose the patch data you're stuck with an outdated game. New releases also wouldn't be able to be patched either, which could encourage polished releases but on the other hand it might not.

It will be. Sony hasn't cared about the Vita at all. It was carried by third-party developers while Sony mostly ignored its existence. The Vita is a damn good handheld system, but unfortunately when the company that created it refuses to support it, we see how things turn out. Could have turned out much better for the system (especially with Remote Play with PS4) if Sony could have been assed to put a little effort into it. 

So yeah, Sony has no issues with completely cutting everything off that has to do with the Vita.

As for patches, I assume as long as the online servers remain up, that won't be a worry. However, if they are willing to shut down the store fronts for the PS3 and Vita, that likely means that a completely shut down of the servers won't be all too far behind. Maybe another 2-3 years until we get that announcement. At least I hope so, give me some time to go back and actually platinum my PS3/Vita library.

[ShiraNoMai]

It's incredible that they would do this and have the gall to offer a digital-only console and expect people to buy it. What trust do I have that you won't pull the plug on my entire library one day and this console becomes an incredibly large paperweight in 7 years?

[Moonface]

It's incredible that they would do this and have the gall to offer a digital-only console and expect people to buy it. What trust do I have that you won't pull the plug on my entire library one day and this console becomes an incredibly large paperweight in 7 years?

Unfortunately you might be fucked regardless of what version of their systems you get. I can't find the place I read it right now (trying to find it again) but apparently PS3 onward has a battery inside that is used as a form of DRM that syncs itself with Sony's servers, and if that battery dies your system will brick itself because that battery is necessary for games to run. PS4 has it too, and I expect PS5 does as well. You can replace the battery, but the problem there is if one day you can't get it to connect to whatever server Sony uses to sync the battery and activate it, then it won't make any difference.

No idea if other companies have anything like it in their systems, and for all I know what I read could be complete bullshit, but if it isn't then every PS3 onwards is the equivalent of a Gameboy cartridge except with the added fun of having to establish a server connection upon replacement to actually work again.

EDIT:
I found a video showing the battery issue I mentioned, with the added bonus of it being done in a way that replicates what would occur if access to PSN was no longer possible:

[Moonface]

Sony have sent out an email today confirming that the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable stores will be closing this Summer.

The PSN stores for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable will be closed on July 2, 2021. The PlayStation Vita store will close later, on August 27, 2021.

After these dates, purchases can no longer be made for any content on these systems. However, any content that has been purchased can be re-downloaded, and any digital vouchers for games and PlayStation Plus will still be redeemable. However, any funds in your PSN account will not be useable on these systems (due to the lack of a store to use them on) and will have to be used on the PS4 and PS5 stores instead.

---

At least content can still be downloaded, so you just need to purchase whatever you want and worry about downloading it later. Hopefully a lot of the games will be put over onto PS Now (especially the digital only titles) so that they aren't restricted to physical copies which I expect are going to see a huge jump in prices once these closures happen.

[Maniakkid25]

Looks like this has been overtaken by events: Sony has now announced that they will be keeping the PS3 and Vita stores online "for the foreseeable future". PSP store is still planned to be shut down as scheduled on July 2.

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 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.


[it continues after this, but that's not important to the discussion]

[Moonface]

Makes me wonder if they kept it because of the money suddenly pouring in, or because they saw just how much people didn't like that a lot of games are going to become inaccessible. I expect the stores will still go away one day though, but really it shouldn't be until Sony offers decent backwards compatibility like Microsoft does.