Sony closing Ps3/Vita/PSP shops by end of summer.

So since last night, there's been a ton of reportage on Sony closing down the shops to their last generation hardware. That's not all that surprising, considering that just a couple months ago, Sony made it impossible to actually buy games on a web browser, forcing people to actually go on the store on their respective hardware. So this seems like the logical next step.

What has gotten people's panties in a bunch is that there's no real word as to whether or not Sony will allow redownloads of games people already purchased after those stores close down permanently. Granted, this is the kind of thing that physical-only folks have been saying for years. Granted, I also think its inevitable that a crises does happen that leads to people losing their downloads--it's just a matter of who blinks first. But I'd also figure that all of these tech giants will do everything possible to delay that inevitability. Which makes it baffling should Sony chose to essentially render all games purchased digitally on the psp/vita/ps3 completely useless. Never mind it ruins their own stake in an increasingly digital world, but it also ensures a backlash that could reach the main stream, never mind the number of law suits that Sony would looking at.

I'm of the opinion that Sony has already taken these things to account, and that you'll be able to still redownload games you already purchased. But it would be insane, and have a drastic effect on the industry at large if that wasn't the case.

Unlike the Wii, the digital market was a major component of the PS3. I can not imagine the shit storm that would erupt if we could no longer download/re-download our purchases. I just can not see this happening and I'm not too worried.

The PS3 is the best way to play PS1 games and there's a healthy library of those available digitally. Would suck if we can't get those anymore.

Anyway, if this happens I see no reason to avoid getting my PS3 modded with a larger hard drive. Piracy is still the best method for preserving video games, unfortunately.

@justin258: Sony is outright hostile to its legacy. Say what you want about Nintendo, but it at least understands its legacy is connected to how people perceive the company today. That's why you'll always be able to play SMB in some form. I just don't get it. Sony's run in the ps1/ps2 era is considered to have some of the best games ever made, and they actively just don't give a shit about it. Apparently if your name doesn't being with Final and end with 7, you can fuck right off.

If this ends up coming to pass, and there is no longer a way to buy these games digitally, I'll be looking to sell my PS5. Buying a digital console from them was a mistake, and I'll be looking to off load that thing as fast as possible.

Hopefully, this will mean that Sony has some way to emulate those early console and handheld games to preserve their legacy. But if it turns out that Sony is just going to ditch decades worth of games and not have anyway to access them, then I won't be supporting Sony PlayStation ever again. Its bad enough that it appears they're on board with selling their big AAA games for 70 dollars, despite many of them having some form of micro transactions in them. But the laziness of them not fixing their HUD issues, their storage and save issues, and them still not including many features that were promised like a VRR option in the console now many months after release is alarming.

Despite the low availability, many people who wanted to buy a PS5 eventually found a way to get one, if the overall sales numbers are to be believed. I also have a digital only version, because I wanted to save money and didn't see a need to get the disc version based on how it appeared things were going with digital sales. Now, this news comes out and its not good if there is no way to play legacy titles once the digital access shuts down. And no, PS Now even though I'm subscribed to it, isn't good enough. Their PS3 library is streaming only. You can't download games, and a lot of the PS3 games that came out during that generation are missing because of licensing issues.

It appears that Microsoft's long game tactics of giving gamers different ways to play their games, and full backwards compatibility with their legacy titles is going to eventually emerge them as the winner this console cycle. Not to mention almost every major patch they do is somehow improving how their new consoles work, unlike Sony.

People want to whine about emulation, but think about how many games would have been lost forever to the media graveyard if it didn't exist, because clearly many major corporations don't care about video games outside of turning a quick profit.

The video game industry is getting shadier by the year.

Well, it's going to make my last Sony console purchase pretty redundant if there's no way to redownload things to it. I have the enormous 60gig one at launch(ish), mostly because I wanted to have an easy way to play the stack of PS2 discs I have, but when the drive died in that I just went back to using the PS2 - which to this day works fine. In fairness, most of my games from that generation were bought on the 360 so it's not a massive loss, my sympathy goes out to those who used it as their primary place for digital purchases if it is the end to getting hold of them.

It was my experience with the PS3 that put me off getting a Sony console again, and while I don't think any of the major players have gotten to grips with dealing with their legacy games and systems quite right, Sony certainly seem to be lagging behind the others from an outsider's perspective. I can't see anything changing their stance in the near future towards this, but I can see the people in the emulation scene getting the bit between their teeth to open up more of this clutch of games to those that are wanting it on their PC.

I think there is a good chance Sony fully pulls the plug, with maybe a 6 month grace period to redownload old games. I think it would be an idiotic move when they are pushing digital sales, but I bet their marketing research says not enough people care, and the PS3 store has always been bad and buggy and they may just not want to maintain it anymore.

In terms of what the long term answer is, it’s simple. An integrated digital store. Steam has this, and Xbox has it across Xbox one and the series consoles (the Xbox 360 doesn’t have the power to run an integrated store.) Eventually Microsoft will stop updating the Xbox One store and there will be some divergence, but as long as they can run a thin client on the XBONE it will continue working. Separating out store and library functions also solves the issue of old downloads.

Sony’s stores are all separate and the PS3 store has a lot of maintenance problems. It’s likely hard to find good people who want to work on that project because legacy support isn’t a sexy job and it doesn’t build in demand skills. You’re working with old tech and just keeping things running.

I understand the desire to move on from the corporate perspective, and I am sure it is a money loser at this point, but I think they are underestimating the PR hit. That’s why I think this unofficial leak might have been intentional. Leak the plan, see the reaction, and cancel or go through with it depending on what people say. It is not an uncommon corporate strategy.

Personally if Sony close these stores it will push me hard into the Microsoft ecosystem. I can still play most of my favorite 360 games on my Series X, and their commitment to backwards compatibility and smart ways to keep those old games commercially viable makes it clear that they are not planning anything similar.

For people saying “just go physical” you are underestimating how much current games rely on patches and updates, if the downloads go those probably will too. Enjoy your unpatched Cyberpunk or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla disc.

I long believed in spirit of competition and spread out my digital library as wide as possible. When Impulse changed hands (sold to GameStop), I lost half my library (redownloadable but couldn't be authenticated). When GFW Marketplace rebranded to Xbox, nothing in the library was re-downloadable (true still to this day). I also lost a bunch of purchases on smaller distributors such as OnLive and GameTap, but they don't sting as much because I didn't lose too much and it's hard to blame them when they actually legit went out of business.

Anyway, the lesson is... unless you're buying from GOG or some other DRM-free outlets that lets you make permanent offline backups, always think of your digital "purchases" as rentals!

I can't buy that at all. Unless their marketing team is filled with incompetents. I understand closing the shops from that perspective because it absolutely makes more sense to consolidate the stores into a single storefront. And I'm sure there's enough case to make that they don't have to really worry about denying people the ability to buy ps3/vita games. Yeah, it sucks that there are digital exclusive games that will no longer be available, but whatever.

It's the possibility of not being able to repurchase games I already own that rubs me the wrong way. I'm like 80% certain that Sony will include someway to redownload our games for the forseeable future, and it's probably just the excitable mob getting a bit too crazy. But Sony's attitude to its older titles has always been nothing sort of baffling to me in how hostile they are to their own library. It's not even just they don't care about it, they want to make sure their players don't give a shit either. And it feels out of touch. Much like how out of touch Sony was when cross play was beginning to be a thing and for whatever reason they decided to be stubborn about it.

Since I don't see myself ever buying anything from the PS3 Store again and have the few games I care about already downloaded (should recheck though), this won't be that big of a personal issue, but it still does suck a bunch. I at least hope that they won't be so dumb that they wouldn't provide any ways to re-download the things you've bought once the Store's gone.

@kemuri07: The way the PS3 works, the storefront is the only way to redownload older games. So unless Sony wants to build a whole new PS3 app to let people download stuff, it isn’t clear what point there is in taking out the ability to purchase but leaving the rest of the storefront up. You still need to maintain it and keep it secure so people can’t get access to new games. Unless there’s some complex rights issue around selling games or something like that it’s not clear what the point of just taking away the ability to purchase is. There are still people spending money on these store fronts so you lose whatever revenue that is (not much) and still have the maintenance responsibilities.

Maybe they have a plan of some kind for fixing the web based download utility or something like that. It is possible. But in general when store fronts have gone down so has the ability to access old games. I cannot remember a prior store front they went down but left up the ability to download your old stuff.

It's the classics that people are worried about. I mean don't worry about games like Shin Megami or Persona--we'll get some repackaged remastered of those games throughout the next several years. It's the weirder, or harder stuff to get on physical, that there is at least a version of it on the PSN storefront.

My Vita already has some Playstation Mobile games archived on it, maybe they'll have some company.

I'll have to look through the store using the terrible interface and see if there's anything I need to buy while I can.

the storefront is the only way to redownload older games

Hmmm I don't think that's true. There's a separate tab that allows you to go to your account directly and redownload games. The vita, on the other hand, you do actually have to go on the storefront. That has me worried.

Definitely going to turn the Wifi off on my VITA permanently before this happens...just in case.

There were some minor adjustments made to my Vita a while back that seem smarter than ever all of a sudden.

Not surprised, and I'm just going to point out that Sony has a precedence of just dropping this stuff entirely, if you used the PlayStation Mobile store (which was available for Vita, and I think PSP Go, along with Sony Ericsson phones) they just straight up removed your ability to redownload any of your purchases when they closed the store down.

If this ends up being true then i no longer buy PlayStation consoles and mod the ones i do have. Im somewhat skeptical because launching a new console that has a digital only version, while your competitor is all about backwards compatibility and old games, is the worst time ever to say "fuck all that money you spent on our store" and shut that stuff down.

last time i tried that it would crash not to long down the list of games i had on there, basically making it impossible to re download most things that way. If that is there solution to this its not going to work for me, and probably a lot of other people as well.

It depends on the perception Sony wants to create. If Sony wants consumers to feel confident buying a digital-only PS5, I think they need to prove that they'll honor the investment once those become old games.

One of the common criticisms I see made about Stadia is it requires faith that Google won't abandon the platform and nuke your game library. While it's even more critical for streaming services, the success of any digital distribution platform hinges on consumer faith. I believe that's why Nintendo chose to allow re-downloads when they discontinued the Wii Shop in 2019. I also believe that's why Microsoft made multi-generational backwards compatibility a major selling point of Xbox Series X|S.

To me, Microsoft has basically been saying the entire Xbox software library matters to their business. The amount of hours I engage with that library matters. Both of those things seem to matter as much (or more) to Microsoft as individual purchases. The overall message I get is, "you can trust us to honor your investment, because that's one way we make money". Of course, I was also one of the few people who regularly used a Kinect! No company has a perfect track record here, but I have faith overall (especially since Phil Spencer took over the Xbox unit).

Meanwhile, Sony's messaging has been noncommittal. Their belief in "generations" has benefits, but it also implies they're focused mainly on the now. Want to play your PS3 games? Hook up your old system. Want more PSVR? Eh...we'll see what happens. Now, I know the PS5 has backwards compatibility with PS4, and they just revealed new VR hardware. That's great, but I didn't have faith those things would happen. If they had said, "PS5 will only play new games with maximum ray tracing!" I wouldn't have been surprised. I know that's unrelated to keeping an old storefront online, but it goes to the perception they've created about how they value old games.

You know what's really hard to do? Finding Resident Evil 2 (PSX) on the PS Store. Looks like I'm hooking my PS3 to make that happen.

We'll see how those chips land as they fall.

I went all in years ago with buying digital games on my PS3. Some of them, a game called Drakengard 3 comes to mind, will very likely never be introduced to the PS5, Steam or even PlayStation Now. I would take a very dim view of Sony if they terminate downloads for games I bought 5 - 10 years ago from their stores.

To play the devil's advocate: we all fondly remember the PSX / PS2 classics, but how many of us actually go back and play them *regularly*? (I personally load up the PS3-playable version of the PSX Chrono Trigger about once a year, play for about an hour, and...that's about it. Oh, and Red Star, because who the hell ever heard of *that* property?!)

I guarantee you that, if a game series of yesteryear is beloved enough, a version (re-release, remaster, remake, whatever you want to call it) of it will also appear on the PS5 digital store. Yes, it will suck if you have to purchase it again, and yes, this is not a practice that benefits the customer, but it's not an apocalyptic "classic PSX/PS2/PS3 games will disappear forever and ever" situation.

@dasakamov: I don't think folks are all that worried, specifically anyway, about the popular series and games. Yeah those will probably resurface if there is money to be made again on them.

But take something like... Tokyo Jungle. That game will vanish into the mist.

@kemuri07: That tab still goes through the PlayStation store app, and hits the store servers (it goes down when the store is down, or at least did every time I checked.)

And it's extremely unreliable, prone to crashes, and badly maintained. The store in general is badly maintained and has a lot of errors, even while active.

@dasakamov: I played a ton of PS3 last year, including PS3 only games like rain that would be very hard to get without PSN.

I also play PS1 games on PlayStation 3 fairly regularly. I play N2O and Xevious 3D/G+ from time to time, and mess around with the Namco Museum games, which have some stuff that later collections don't.

We're all edge cases here because we're on Giant Bomb. Most people probably don't play their PS3s at all anymore, let alone mess around with PS1 or PS2 games. But we're also their best customers (we've probably all spent a lot more money on games, and digital games, than the average PlayStation owner) and the people who our friends come to when they want to know what systems to buy, so there's value in keeping us happy even if we don't play those games on old systems as much as we used to. But Sony doesn't think it's worth whatever trouble keeping the store open would be. If this is true.

If they are going to shut down the stores, they should make everything free on the last day, right? There's no physical value attached, you're not selling physical games anymore, and you aren't making any money off of sales with no digital store. Why not?

@brian_: I don't know if this is a joke but obviously they can't. First, and most obviously, they don't actually have the rights to the vast majority of the games on the service. They can't just give away other companies' games. Many of those games are still for sale elsewhere and I am pretty sure EA would not be like "well we're trying to sell this Mass Effect Trilogy remaster, but fine, give away the PS3 versions of Mass Effect and all the DLC. That's cool."

Even more obscure titles like the Ys PSP and Vita games are still going to be for sale on Steam. Not sure Falcom would be down with making them free on PSP/Vita.

Secondly, even games that aren't currently for sale on other platforms might still have commercial value at some later date. Sony does remaster games from time to time, despite what people are saying in this thread, and if they want to put rain or Tokyo Jungle out at some later date they probably don't want to flood the market with copies.

Finally...Sony doesn't want you playing PS3 games anyway! They want you playing PS4 and PS5 games.

We are seeing a lot of selective "giving away" of games these days but those are all with specific purposes (like Sony giving away PS4 copies of Ratchet & Clank and Horizon Zero Dawn to build audience for the upcoming sequels). Giving away a whole store would be impossible from a rights perspective, and just wouldn't serve those purposes.

I wouldn't say they're hostile to their legacy. A lot of their success in those era's was down to exclusives that were made by third parties tbh. Dunno what FFVII has to do with Sony and their legacy when it's solely a square enix developed and published game.

It appears you're hostile to Sony for what 3rd parties are doing which doesn't make sense.

@kemuri07: I just find it comical that Sony, a software company, in almost all aspects of software development fails to make software do what even consumers consider logical and easy to do. If they can’t make their ps3 store talk to the PS4 store and further on to the PS5 store it’s not wonder they had the data breach on ps3 and what will likely be the next software failure. If we hadn’t demanded the sorcery of account name changes we might have nice things.

If it wasn’t famine or famine getting new consoles I would hope a move like this would have the digital versions of the PS5 collecting dust on the shelf and store clerks preaching the gospel harder against a digital only console.

Even if you are able to repurchase your entire library every few years, your saves get lost each time. Your trophies will be locked in their current state; you'll have to do most of them again if you're at all a completionist in that way. The state of games change as licenses are lost, etc. I'm looking for more continuity than just being able to play the games.

The PS+ situation will be interesting in either case. There's a whole list of games that you won't be able to buy, but you'll have to keep paying the subscription to play them, but you'll only be able to do that if you'd previously had them as part of your subscription before. And that list is different regionally.

@eccentrix: Even if or when the store is shut down. You'll should still be able to download your purchases just not make new ones similar to the Wii U.

@thepanzini: Has that been confirmed now?

@eccentrix: No, but that's how its always been handled in the past.

The story in the OP is rumour atm anyway, would it not be wise to wait for confirmation first before speculating the worst.

Apart from when Sony took down the Playstation Mobile stuff, as well as all the services goosemunch mentioned earlier in the thread. It's happened before and the PSN store is such a mess that it's not implausible that it would happen sooner rather than later. Because losing access to this stuff is almost certainly inevitable eventually. Besides, speculation is always fun and it helps to have these theoretical discussions early so we can better react to what actually happens.

People in this thread who think that Sony is hostile to the PlayStation legacy obviously haven't played Astro's Playroom on the PS5. That game is basically a love letter to PlayStation. In addition, there actually are a fair number of PS2 games available to purchase on PS4 through software emulation. The whole Jak & Daxter PS2 series, Ape Escape 2, etc... And then there are the remasters like Loco Roco or Patapon, and the remakes for games like Medievil etc...

The problem is that it seems like nobody has quite figured out how to profit off of older games unless they were massive smash hits. Nintendo didn't just give up on the Virtual Console because they're Nintendo. They gave up on the Virtual Console because it just wasn't a profit center. Sony didn't end the PlayStation Classics line because they're mean. They did it because nobody was buying PS1 games for their PS3 (and I say this as someone who actually owns a lot of PS1 games for PS3....and almost all of the PS2 games on PS4.)

If the PS3 shop goes down it will be because nobody is buying things from it anymore.

People on this site have a very skewed perception about how much the average person thinks about video games and what games they care about. Do I personally want access to the Toy Story Kart Racer from 2001? Yes. I actually played a couple hours of it and blogged about it for this site five or so years ago. I could see myself playing it again some day. It's actually pretty good! But there aren't enough people who care to make it a commercially viable product in 2021.

@eccentrix: Fair enough.

Sony did launch a new PC web store late last year removing the ability to purchase PS3, PSP and Vita games yet you could still download purchases from your account on PC. Seems a more likely scenario.

@bigsocrates: Idk, but as much as I hate on Sony the PlayStation classic retro console was still a day 1 must buy for me. Even with the terrible selection of games on it. There was an opportunity to have that thing hold 25(?) of the best games ever made. Had they included the analog sticks and some rumble with better games that system could have been an amazing introduction to game series for people that already love Sony and spend a ton already. Nintendo knocked it out of the park with their NES and SNES classics. Sony rarely delivers. Some of the people that make games for Sony deliver but anything Sony has final say on is very very meh. It’s like in house over at Sony they are embarrassed that the videogame division is so profitable and it’s best to act like it’s not there. Sony’s approach to gaming is baffling

@senorsucks2suck: I am not going to defend the PlayStation Classic, which is bad (no dual analog and including games like Rainbow Six are decisions I can't comprehend) but a lot of old classic consoles have been bad. The NES Classic and SNES classic were both good, but also were made by Nintendo at a point where they were at a nadir and really needed to get some good will back. Note that Nintendo hasn't made any classic consoles since, and those consoles are no longer available, and many of the games on them aren't on the Nintendo Online service either.

Meanwhile Sega made a lot of terrible mini Genesis machines, and there have been bad mini Atari and Intellivision machines too.

The fact that Sony put that out at all, and included some pretty good games on there (including IQ: Intelligent Qube, which had never been previously re-released) shows that they had at least some interest in their legacy, even if it was mishandled.

But the fact that the mini system craze seems to have ended, and that Sony was the only company to release a 5th gen mini system, shows that there really is a limited market for old games, and one that for some reason seems to end with the 4th gen.

@bigsocrates: if they had maybe done an online ordering system to let me choose the games even if said choices took me well beyond the $100 price point I think that system would have been a top notch gift even for the fortnite only crowd. Gaming is in a mess position. Do yo think gamers are pro current state of gaming or just tolerating it? The other side of the coin are developers making the game they want to make or just making what sells. Classics are what people on twitch and YouTube are capitalizing on and is kind of the last segment of gaming that isn’t a marketing deal with Cheetos. I wonder what YouTube and twitch of the next 5 years looks like? COD streams, fortnite react videos, rainbow operator critiques, a digital foundry breakdown of the next AC protagonist’s sweat glands and what else.... crickets? I’ll keep watching Tim Rogers videos where he will dig up some old things (newly unavailable) and Jeff play older games. Without classics there isn’t much to look forward to in the future.

@senorsucks2suck: I think that most people don't care about old games. I think that they may want to play some of the most popular games from their youth again (Mario, Crash, whatever) and may buy some of their favorites in remaster, but they don't really care about the vast majority of old stuff. There's always going to be demand for old Mario and a few other franchises, but if you only play 5-10 games a year at most you're not going to spend some of that on some creaky old obscure thing.

A customizable mini console doesn't really make sense. At that point just make it Wifi enabled and let people buy games through the system itself. The reason they didn't do that is that they think a simple curated selection would make things easier, plus they don't need to secure rights for a massive library of games, just the 20 that they put on the system. Licensing and rights play a huge role in what games get re-released or are made available.

@permanentsigh:

Other people are saying that Sony has stopped taking applications for new games to publish on Vita's store. Some of these games may come out because they were already in the pipeline but some may not. Or this may all be rumor, but the fact that Sony has not commented at all on the matter AND the fact that so many mainstream websites have published the rumor (and presumably checked with their sources at Sony before doing so) makes me pretty nervous.

The below video does not confirm that the store is shutting down, but the guy does say that developers told him that they were no longer allowed to publish on the store. Maybe he's lying, but he's a smallish Vita focused channel that isn't click-baity.

@bigsocrates: people may not care about old games but if I bought something I’m not going to let a company let my access to it evaporate with no consequence to them, no matter how minor.

"Most people don't care about old downloads" doesn't make it right. What a bizarre defense.

It's like saying "oh yeah whatever why would you want to watch a movie from 2012. Phssh you want to watch The Avengers? Get fucked" just because Big Disney decided that they'd rather you go spend $30 on renting Black Widow. Like, that's what the video game industry is like, and thinks is normal and okay.

Suddenly every ethical statement that gets made on a forum like these needs to be countered with "omg you're such a nerd for caring about this" as if that adds anything to the discussion whatsoever.

If this turns out to be true (jury's out on that) then Sony will never see another cent from me.

I regularly play my Vita and Ps3 because I like playing my old games. Also, Sony has pretty much told me that I cannot assume that any game I purchase will go with any new iterations.

And yeah, I paid for these games. Even if I don't play them, I still want access. Primarily because I'm a hoarder and believe that "no, I'll definitely go back and play that game...someday" but also because I paid fucking money for this.

@swthompson: Only Sony thinks it's a defense. An explanation is not the same as a defense.

Sony doesn't do things because they are the right things to do. It does things because it thinks they will be profitable with various elements playing a role (to some extent the convenience of employees is factored in, because employee morale matters, and executives especially don't want to do things that are a pain for them personally)

People can make whatever arguments they want about what Sony should do or what they want Sony to do. They can threaten to withhold their business or whatever they want. I frankly think there should be some kind of legal protections, but there aren't.

@permanentsigh: Boy I sure hope this guy is right and it's not true. I'm 90% sure you really won't be able to re-download anything once the store is closed. I mean why close the store but keep up the servers that the games are on? The whole point is to save money because you aren't making enough for those costs to be worth it.

The report says that the games will be unavailable for purchase. I think you can still access and re-download any games you have already purchased. The closest analogy that I can think of is what Sony did with PT.

Still a bummer that Sony can't keep their storefronts up a running at least in some diminished capacity.

@electricbarrier: Web stores or likewise PSN is not one giant amalgamation or instance running of a single server/location, game authentications are handled separately so as long as the Sony can still verify your previous purchases you can re-download your games.