Sony has backtracked on its plan to shut down the PS3 and PS Vita PlayStation Store later this year. Sony announced earlier this month that the company would be turning off the marketplaces for both the PS3 and PS Vita in July so users would no longer be able to purchase digital games for the hardware. However, the company now admits that they made the wrong decision and the stores will stay online. Except for the PSP store. Sony will still shut it down on 2 July 2021 as planned.

In a blog post, Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan admitted that the company made the wrong decision. He says that the stores will remain online and operational for both PS3 and PS Vita for the “foreseeable future”.

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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.

Sony had originally announced the digital storefronts for its PS3 and PS Vita hardware would shut down in July. The announcement was met with harsh backlash from fans who were upset at the idea of losing these marketplaces and the ability to purchase games on them. This was specifically led by the fact that Sony does not have a way to play specific PS3 games at all on both PS4 and PS5. Sure, the company has ported and remade some titles but not everything is available on current hardware.

I would love to go back and play some iconic PS3 games like Resistance, but it would mean purchasing the game digitally. Thankfully, that is now possible.

Source: PS Blog

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