After seemingly a constant flow of debilitating news for PlayStation fans, Sony at long last dropped a touch of uplifting news yesterday when they formally retracted their previous choice to shut down the PlayStation Store on the PlayStation 3 and the Vita. Seventy-dollar games, the misfortune or through and through dismissal of huge restrictive titles, an old clock battery turning PS4s into paperweights are only a few of the elements adding to the turmoil in being a fan. Now at least, Sony has reversed course on one of their more recent and frustrating decisions.
The president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Jim Ryan, posted to the PlayStation Blog himself saying, “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.”
While support for the PSP is as yet planned to end on July 2nd, the choice to keep access to the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita owners is a big win for game conservation as well as fans of classic games. As per the blog, the choice depended on the disclosure that there were still a lot of clients willing “to continue purchasing classic games on PS3 and PS Vita for the foreseeable future”.
It’s a slightly humorous framing considering the massive amount of backlash Sony got after the news to end support for their legacy platforms just unexpectedly showed up on the PlayStation support page a month ago. Notwithstanding a ton of upset fans across social media, there were various posts that went up listing games that would be affected or just gone forever after the shutdown.
Physical copies of PS3 and PS Vita games started skyrocketing across the internet and those stressed over losing access to their old favorites started rushing to digital stores and purchasing up games en mass. This increase in business interest is likely what really piqued Sony’s interest and got them to change their decision. Regardless of what made them change their mind, it was certainly not a good look.
The news that Sony would have basically been eliminating access to a huge number of games was in stark contrast to Microsoft’s R&D endeavors over recent years which has looked to make many Xbox and Xbox 360 games compatible with the Xbox Series X and S as could be expected under the circumstances.
Now, this comparison is only a small part of a larger narrative that’s recently been forming around Sony’s lack of messaging around PlayStation products and services. As the value of Xbox’s Game Pass continues to increase, making large third-party titles like Outriders available at launch, PlayStation owners are waiting for Sony to announce their own similar service which has been teased in the past.
Surprisingly, even MLB: The Show, which is a franchise developed by Sony and has been exclusive to PlayStation consoles for over a decade, is launching on Xbox and Game Pass this week. While it’s probably a good thing for the franchise and baseball in general, it’s various little things like this and Microsoft’s acquisition of seemingly every studio under the sun that has some PlayStation owners scrutinizing the long-term value propostion of their sparkly new PS5s.
