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

@thepanzini: This claim isn't based on anything. It's not as simple as authentication, they need to host the files, pay for bandwidth, and, probably most expensive, update and maintain security so that people can't download games they didn't buy or, worse, mess with the code of the games on the servers.

The store itself is probably a relatively cheap part of the operation. They also would have to basically make a new app to let you redownload games.

People who think that of course you'll be able to redownload your own stuff are just building assumptions on top of rumors. Sometimes after a store closes people can redownload stuff but often they can't, and we have no evidence of which way this will go, if it even happens because we don't even know for sure that the store is closing.

@bigsocrates: I was replying to a question why would they take down the store yet retain the abilty to download games, they can because a store is not one server but many.

as long as the Sony can still verify your previous purchases you can re-download your games.

I never made a definitive statement.

The PSP store was closed but users could still download purchased content.

I would also like to add even with the new PC web store, the old one is still accessible. And so is the download queue with access to legacy titles which were removed from the new.

Download Queue

US PSN Store

UK PSN Store

Sony can turn off the store on PS3/Vita and point users to the above links without any need for an app, as they did with the PSP. It would be a poor solution but they could

@thepanzini: The reason that you can still download your PSP games is that they had to leave the PSP games up for Vita owners. By taking down all three stores at once (and mentioning PSP specifically) it seems more likely that they want to take the whole infrastructure down.

We don't know anything at this point, we don't even know if this is real, but keeping games downloadable is about a lot more than keeping authentication servers online, and pulling down the store while leaving the rest of that stuff up is a very odd choice.

@bigsocrates: Yeah they could very easily just take the whole thing down, but its also odd that the old web stores are still even running.

If they wanted to shut the whole thing down they probably would have closed the legacy web store soon after the transition, the might still do in the summer along with rest in the rumor.

I only mention authentication as an example for simplicity sake.

@thepanzini: The whole transition to the new web store for the PS5 was very odd, in part because the new store is terrible. It lacks all kinds of features that the old store had. Not just stuff like a wishlist but basic functionality like seeing DLC for a game as part of its store page or even just screenshots. It doesn't even show you what you're getting in a bundle if you buy it. Sometimes it's in the description, but not always.

It's at least 10 years behind the time. This is part of why I don't know what Sony will do in terms of leaving stuff up or not. Their web store development seems almost shockingly incompetent right now. It's worse than Nintendo, and Nintendo is still using friend codes!

I'm just glad that the PS3 emulation nut is being cracked quite well, should help preserve at least most of the stuff that may be lost. I don't know about y'all, but a world where Trash Panic is a piece of lost media is a world that I want nothing to do with.

@bigsocrates: I think the problem with the new store is that Sony wanted to start fresh with a new layout/format and features and are building it from scratch, rather then update the old store which would have been a hassle with all the old icons, pictures, video and compatibility with old hardware/software and such. I don't build website but it looks like the old and new store are still getting updates and sharing a database of some sort. The old store is still getting game pages for PS5 games, with more content because you can actually see screenshots and video on there for PS5 games that are not up on the new store, and the old store is still %100 functional as far as i can tell despite Sony saying it would be shut down. I assume the end goal is to be better then the old store, but the console had to launch and this is the taped together mess we have for now. Which if they have both stores up and running together right now, i don't see why that cant continue. But like i said i don't make these thing so what do i know.

Im sure Steam and the Xbox store are built on a more flexible foundation that lets them add and change things up without totally breaking things, which i don't think is the case with PS3 the way Sony has had to bolt things on. Im sure Sony are not making much money on the old store, but they are also getting $60 a year from people and get a cut of every game sold. If Valve can keep all the games on Steam without de-listing old low selling content with arguably better features on only money from game sales, i would expect more from Sony.

The only part that has me worried is that it would be easy for Sony to just say "nah that's not happening" and we all go about our day, but they haven't yet and this story is big enough that someone at Sony has seen it. But we will see in a few days if the end of the month rumor is true.

@lego_my_eggo: I memba when “we don’t comment on rumor or speculation,” was a valid or move. That hasn’t been a thing in a decade. Because the grace period between a rumor becoming true and the leak isn’t an exact calculus and there could still be fallout even if this happens in December.

People are talking like this is something already confirmed to be true, and I've even seen people saying they've started panic-buying and downloading everything. Clearly it is not confirmed, and the source of this rumour is not credible. However, I'm sure it's been great for clickbait at the big news sites. (Interestingly, I could not find any mention of this rumour on Gamespot. They might actually have some integrity?)

I don't doubt that Sony will eventually shut down these stores, so it's still worth discussing what COULD happen, but it seems uncharacteristic of them to A) do it with such a short notice and B) have this kind of news leak out.

Anyway, personally I don't care if the store is shut down, as long as downloading purchased content is still possible.... but as much as I tell myself I'll eventually get to my PS3/Vita backlog, my PS4/PS5 backlog is still growing and I know in my heart I'll never go back.

As far as I can tell the link to the web version of the PS3/PSP/Vita store now redirects to the PS4/PS5 store, while previously you could still access the old store. This is both a bummer and seems to suggest that there's definitely something going on.

Well, it's official. PS3/PSP stores shut down July 2nd, Vita joins them on August 27th.

Previously purchased titles will still be downloadable, but this still sets a concerning trend to me. Obviously, servers can't run forever, but what's supposed to happen to all of the digital-exclusive titles on these platforms? If there's no way for players to access those games unless they already owned them, those games aren't being preserved at all, it's strictly about upholding purchases. As digital-only consoles get more and more common, this is going to become a major issue. I wouldn't be surprised if one day buying a new discless PS5 is equivalent to buying an OnLive box nowadays.

@franzlska: Its a shame the legacy stores are closing, but given both PS4/5 are x86 based forward compatibility is a lot easier to achieve without the need for older hardware or emulation. And significantly more people have digital purchases nowadays which incentivizes backwards compatibility further.

I'm assuming we can still download the updates/patches for old games as well?

I didn't think that the no re downloading of old purchases thing was going to be true, but at this rate its only a matter of time. This really sucks ass in terms of finding old purchases and playing them again, which was already a pain in the ass on the PS3 to begin with. Luckily i have a list of my past downloads with dates that should help me narrow that crap down, but i think the amount of stuff in my download list is in the two thousand range. All around Sony is really not helping me go out and buy a PS5, Steam GoG is looking better and better every day. They really should have a "going out of business sale" on those old stores, but apparently Sony told publishers some time ago that they cant run PS3/PSP/VITA sales. And im far less willing to toss even more money down that hole after this.

Its going to take me one hour to re download Gran Turismo HD Concept v1.2 all the way at the bottom of the download list!

Edit: @superslidetail Im betting yes. Even when PSN was totally shut down for months from the hack you could still download patches. So i assume whatever servers keeps those files might be the same ones that hold PS4/PS5 patches.

Great. Time to go through my list of games to buy and sort through which ones aren't going to be available anywhere else. Everyone make sure you got your copy of Frobisher Says. It's free. Pretty sure Murasaki Baby and MonsterBag where only released digitally on Vita and weren't ported to anything else as well.

EDIT: Turns out finding anything between the Vita and PS3 stores is a complete pain in the ass. Specifically, the PS1 and PSP classic stuff. Half the games in those sections only display on one version of the store and not the other. And I'm willing to bet there are some that aren't surfacing on either one.

When you go to the All Games tab and filter for PS1 classics on the PS3, it only surfaces 71 games. When you go to the Most Popular tab and go to the Classics section there, it says there are 211 PS1 games, but will only show you the top 100. Cho Aniki is in neither of these sections, but it does show up on Vita store under the "C" category for PS1 Classics.

In summary, dead store is bad.

Just noticed the e-mail(s) from Sony about this.

You'll be able to re-download the games [and videos] that you bought.

So, yeah. Still wouldn't hurt to buy bigger storage if necessary and download and update the games that you have now since the Download List option is prone to crashing compared to the PlayStation Store option, but the sky isn't falling.

Edit 4/13/21:

Well, thanks Jim Ryan for making my sarcastic remark about the sky not falling already age poorly.

Sony has the nerve to send out emails (without reading) with no active current generation solution. All of the PS1 and PS3 titles i have bought on this service could have easily been brought on to my PS4/PS5 account. Am i honestly supposed to pay to keep my PS3 alive through black market and Amazon means? Could i somehow forfeit all of those titles for store credit or something comparable on the current store? If they had played it smart they could have made their Play at Home Initiative as a way for these legacy console owners to feel like they were getting something free and limit the free games available to the general public. I.E. "if you close your PS3/Vita/PSP digital accounts feel free to experience titles like Moss and Rez Infiinite for free. I would at least feel better about their slight. Instead they are giving a bunch of games away for no reason while at the same time bemoaning the struggle of keeping our paid for titles available to us. Sony's rep is in the trash for me.

@senorsucks2suck: All of the PS1 and PS3 titles i have bought on this service could have easily been brought on to my PS4/PS5 account.

That my not be true at all, the PS Store was hastily put together and Sony made some very poor choices in the process. Not being able to change your PSN name being a prime example.

The new backend or store on PS4/5 could for example be a unified store like MS has, where a game has one sku across all regions. Games on the PS3, PSP and Vita have different sku's across each reigion, migrating a game with multiple sku's over to the new store with a single sku would not be an easy task.

Even with the PSN name change several games had what Sony called critical issues.

• Losing in-game currency (whether earned while playing or purchasing as a microtransaction)
• Losing game progress, leaderboard status and progress towards trophies
• Losing user-generated content
• Parts of game simply not functioning properly – both online and offline.

Its also pretty obvious why their giving away games for no reason, and your paid titles are still available.

@thepanzini: The bigger issue than the technical side, which is a hassle but could be solved through time and money, is the licensing issues. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 store licensing deals were done without backwards compatibility in mind. That's the main reason we don't have universal backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games. It's not that it's so hard for Microsoft to implement and test the emulator, it's that each title is a unique deal, and in some cases those deals are completely impossible to make because the game is in rights limbo or it has its own rights issues around music or other sublicensed elements.

For the PS3 store Sony could figure out how to emulate PS1 games on PS4+5 easily. That's a pretty trivial task if you have the resources. And it could figure out store migration if it wanted to. There are ways to manage that database.

Sony already has crossbuy set up between PS3 and PS4 for a bunch of titles, so it is clearly able to migrate data across stores. It did it for games like Journey.

But for every title for which it does not own absolutely all the rights it would probably have to create a new deal to publish that game on new platforms. In some cases that could cost a lot of money or just be completely impossible. Microsoft did it for a subset of games because it needed to do damage control for the botched launch of the Xbox One, but even it stopped at a small fraction of the Xbox 360 library, let alone the OG Xbox library.

@bigsocrates: Yeah totally, the PS2 titles on PS4 are already emulated so some framework is already in place.

It would be a nightmare all round, going back 20 years for licensing would be very challenging.

I don't think its a money or tech problem just one requiring a massive amount of time.

@thepanzini: To some degree it probably is about money, at least for some PS3 games. Take the Tony Hawk games. Those games have expensive licensed soundtracks and they're probably licensed for specific platforms. When they wanted to remake Tony Hawk 1 and 2 for PS4 they had to relicense the soundtrack and I'm sure it was expensive as heck. Of course that game was being remade so if specific rights holders didn't want to offer their songs at a reasonable price Activision was able to just not include those songs, so they couldn't be held hostage, and also that remake sold millions of copies and probably pulled in at least $50-100,000,000 in revenue, so if they had to spend $5,000,000 relicensing the songs it was worth it.

Now look at the Tony Hawk games on PS3. They also have licensed soundtracks, and they may be platform specific or have expired deals, but if you had to relicense those songs for potentially millions of dollars you would earn...almost nothing because nobody is going to buy PS3 Tony Hawk games at this point.

Rinse and repeat.

Now for PS1 and PS2 games on the service this is less of an issue because they don't generally have licensed music or whatever, but nobody would be happy if they only ported over PS1 and PS2 games, and there's still the game licensing itself. Konami owns Klonoa and it's not going to publish it on PS4/5 without some kind of payday. For some companies just the opportunity to sell the games on PS4/5 would be enough, but that would be selective group, and does NAMCO even want its old NAMCO MUSEUM PS1 games (all on PS3) available on PS5 and competing with its new NAMCO compilation titles? They're at least going to want to be compensated.

So trying to get the whole library gets expensive very quickly, and only getting part of the library doesn't really satisfy anyone.

Well, now that it's officially confirmed, I'm left wondering "what the hell is this website TheGamer and how did they get that leak?" Anyway, I'm glad that I can still download my purchases (not that I would download anything except my Vita backlog at this point). It's been exhausting watching people panic about needing to buy massive Vita memory cards and external hard drives.. People were even worried that trophies and patches would no longer work.

I do get the feeling that the backend of the original PSN store is a huge mess. They did the work to bring PS4 content into the new backend, but don't feel that it's worth the effort to bring PS3/PSP/Vita content over. With how good PS4 BC is on PS5, I "feel" like they will support BC (from PS4 onwards) in future consoles (unless Cerny quits and their new architect does something PS3-like).

Anyway, they said in the e-mail they closed the old store so they could focus on the new PS4/PS5 store. Which I hope is true, because the new store suuuuuucks right now.

Makes you wish when they where shutting down the web store they would have given people a heads up about the console stores closing. The way they handled it by saying "oh hey the web store is going down, but the consoles stores are cool", then the day after they fully shut down the web store "oh hey you know those console storefronts? fuck those as well." Now we have the far inferior versions of the stores, all the while Sony asks us to make sure we have all our cross-buy titles accounted for after the fact. Would have been easier to rip the band-aid off in one go and not have people scramble with finding last minute things across multiple storefronts.

Grab Xenogears while you still can! or you know, it will be on the internet in some form for not $100.

@bigsocrates: idk. Having 100+ million consoles in the wild for the ps4 and the potential to do the same with ps5 should translate to leverage in deal making. A world shutdown for a year should translate to loads of time. The Tony Hawk's and Madden 2011s are obvious no goes digitally. But disc based stuff should have been automatic, even if Sony has to cut a check when i verify my copy of TH: American Wasteland and it's playability is restricted to DRM. Maybe price the all digital PS5 at $499 as well and use the $100 difference to fight all those individual battles per account, there is a relationship there (hell, maybe an email address) if those PS3, Vita, and PSP games are available TODAY. The crap deals they forged with the PS1 Classic are still a % of games. What you can't work out give me an arbritrary store credit for digital forfeiture of a title I "OWN" ($5- PSP, $10- Vita, $15-PS3) and foster goodwill. Right now i've got a microscope on Sony and I dont even have a PS5 in hand. Lack of effort may make it so i never do. That's probably $2k-$3k of dollars i won't begin to spend because i can't get $65.95 worth of store credit for games i didnt want to play until i found i couldn't play. While the general public that doesnt know or care about this is sitting pretty with like 10 games for free over the last year (1 or 2 is a PR move... doing 10.. maybe priorities) that they won't even bother to download. Yes, I'm petty.

I believe MS actually did this with a (very) small handful of X360 games. You can't buy a BC version through the MS store, but MS will let you download the BC executable if you insert a disc of the game into an Xbox. I'll see if I can verify that....

Edit: Yeah, confirmed. There's not many, but games with an * on this page "may not be available on the MS store," but can be played through BC if you have a disc: https://majornelson.com/xbox-one-backward-compatibility/

@senorsucks2suck: Having a bunch of consoles on the market only gives you leverage if those consoles will generate new sales. Porting over old versions of games also has a downside, which is that it makes remasters and remakes harder to sell because the old games are accessible. The large install base doesn't help if people are not going to buy new copies of PS3 games but will play their old games and not buy new ones (either remasters of those games or just other new games.)

Because of how the PS4 and PS5 work, where they need to install a copy of a game to the hard drive to run it, disc based games are just as thorny from a rights issue as digital games. Plus Sony is trying to sell digital games. They do NOT want backwards compatibility to be disc only because that will push people away from digital games in general. That's why Microsoft hasn't tried to figure out a way to make all disc games work on the Series S or X. They want parity between discs and physical. There are a few games where only discs work, but those were games that were only ever released on disc and never had a digital version, so nobody who bought the game digitally is missing out. They have not done any games where disc versions will work but digital versions won't, and they would be foolish to do so.

Sony is not going to give out store credit for old digital purchases for just...so many reasons. Not least of them is that those purchases still work. You can still play your old digital PS3 purchases on your PS3, and will be able to for an indefinite period of time. And even if they take the redownload down you may be able to play already installed games indefinitely. They are not going to compensate people for stuff that they can still play.

This is going swimmingly. The PS3 store keeps crashing after purchasing stuff, making grabing some DLC a major pain in the ass. And its reminding me that when they stop letting you download past purchases you are one corrupt hard drive away from games vanishing. Really wish they still had the better web store up for these last minute grabs for DLC and purchases.

What are y’alls last purchases?

I haven’t bought anything yet but making a list atm

So far...

-R&C Into the Nexus

-Sly 4

-Siren Blood Curse

-Trash Panic

-rain

-Persona 4 Arena

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/04/19/playstation-store-on-ps3-and-ps-vita-will-continue-operations/

Well now, that’s unexpected.

@efesell: lol, fuckers, I made my last purchases last week

Well, thanks, Jim Ryan.

Now be a good boy and bring back Japan Studio.

Yeah I saw that. I don't think this was a cynical move made to beef up sales for the fucking Vita. Nah. That's dumb. I mean, it's a cynical move regardless, but not for that.

This was purely profit driven, and they just decided to ignore the fact that people passionately enjoy these older games. Like the Ps2 is widely considered to have one of the strongest gaming libraries in gaming history, and yet their treatment of that history is often mindboggiling. It's clear they don't think you should give a shit about it: think only about the shiny new things.

But game preservation will likely become a present topic as companies shift more into a digital future. Yeah, they reverse tracks, but this is a temporary move: They will delete those servers at some point, and we'll be right back where we started.

My hope: Microsoft comes out on top this generation. They seem to actually understand that people want easy access to their shit and not have to be burden by a console. The hope is that they can put pressure on both Nintendo and Sony to make similar moves.

I mean, I know it might be asking too much, but is there some way that gamers can put pressure on these companies to make gaming preservation an important aspect of their gaming future?

The pressure against Sony was getting bigger and bigger with many loyal Playstation consumers threatening to abandon ship, myself included if they started shutting down digital games. Glad they checked their hubris and realized the mistake they were making. Now if they only decided to fully make the PS5 backwards compatible with both PS3, PS2 and PS1 games, Sony would win this new so-called console war with ease.

@av_gamer: I imagine that there are a lot of licensing issues that'd need to be ironed out before a lot of older games could become playable on the Ps5. Hell, it's why it likely takes so long for Microsoft and Nintendo to get older games on their respective platform.

But shit...at least make an attempt. Sony gave up when the Vita and PsNow failed to catch fire, as they don't really seem interested in putting out older games.

This is good, but all it really did was remind me that Sony should get some emulators working on PS4/PS5/PC and keep these games/stores alive by continuing to sell these games. Because i know that they back stepped this just because of the bad PR it brought on them wasn't worth it. But i also don't expect a company out of the kindness of there heart to keep something like this up without money coming in. I know there is a bunch of legal BS that has to be worked out, but maybe start with if you want to sell your games on our store going forward then any future platform that has a working emulator has the right to use that digital license. Get some lawyers in a room and hash that shit out.

And with Sony dipping there toes into putting there games on PC, if it works out, open up there own GOG/Steam style PC storefront and sell me some old PS1/PS2 games. And maybe make deals with 3rd party developers to use there native PC versions if they allow for more current games, and ill keep tossing money there way rather then use the cheaper parts of the internet.

Okay, that's one problem fixed. Now to deal with the European Super League ...

Obviously good news regarding the PS3 and Vita stores, but the complete reversal when faced with entirely unsurprising backlash doesn't exactly spark confidence in Sony's current leadership.

Oh, Sony. You so crazy.

I imagine the increase in sales from people panic-buying before the closure was a nice little profit boost.

@tds418: It's better to reverse a bad decision than stick with it. I'd be more confident in leadership that can actually change course than leadership that is willing to ride bad decisions all the way.

Now making the decision in the first place without understanding the reaction is a bigger issue, but that's independent from willingness to change course.

@bigsocrates: The problem is that you might have a point if they reacted almost immediately. They didn't. They let the rumors float and didn't bother to address those concerns until like a week later. Changing course is really just doing the bare minimum. It doesnt' suggest they learned anything from this or whether they'll embrace game preservation. Probably not.

They'll still close those servers eventually, but by that point enough Ps5s will be sold so it won't really matter.

@kemuri07: I'm not saying they handled it well, because they didn't and their communication was bad, but reversing course was the right decision and shows Sony's leadership isn't totally blind.

As for why they didn't reverse course immediately, there could be lots of reasons ranging from legal wrangling to having to create a support plan to continue running the store. Large corporations turn slowly and they may have wanted to get all their ducks lined up before making the reversal announcement.

Failing to address the rumors was just dumb.

And of course they won't embrace game preservation and the servers will eventually close. I'm not saying they're great or anything, just that changing course isn't a sign of bad leadership.

My point was they should have known this would have been the reaction before they even announced it. If they're changing course because of the backlash that means they probably weren't expecting it (cuz then why even go through with it in the first place). It's them not realizing this would be the reaction that is a concerning sign IMO in regards to their leadership. Makes them seem out of touch.

It's good that Sony reversed their plan from closing down PS3, PS Vita, and PSP's digital stores because, in this world, I can tell there are some gamers who are still into retro gaming so they may prefer to buy them digital instead of physical.

@bigsocrates: but I don't think its particularly good leadership either. We can't view this decision in a vacuum. Not only does this align with a lot of the things they've said about BC and their unwillingness to tap into that market, but it also makes a lot of their own puzzling actions make more sense in context. Hey, remember when they were the last to budge on cross-platform gaming? For what reason other than they didn't think they had to, and they once again had to change course because their reputation was on the line.

Arrogance is a word that has been constantly attributed to Sony post-Ps2: They just embrace that they are console leader and they don't have to adapt. And it's that ideology that continually gets them in trouble. Like how do you brag about the ps5 being the fastest selling console to date when barely anyone seems to be able to get one.

That's not good leadership.

@kemuri07: I didn't say that I thought that there was good leadership, I just said that the ability to change direction in response to new information or pushback from your customers isn't a sign of bad leadership.

Sony's leadership has been good at some things and bad at others. Clearly they are able to produce hardware and games that resonate with people, and have created good relationships with lots of developers etc... I think they do a bad job in other areas (such as customer service and communication.) Overall whether their leadership is good or bad depends on your perspective. If you're an investor you're probably pretty happy with the PlayStation division's activities. As a user? I have decidedly mixed feelings.

But I wasn't talking holistically, I was just saying that changing course is not bad leadership. If you have to do it all the time that's a different story, but the best leaders are able to remain agile and responsive and not commit to bad courses of action.