PlayStation Store for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita will not close, Sony announced on Monday, reversing a decision that left many gamers wondering what will happen to their digital content on old platforms.
“It’s clear we made the wrong decision here,” Sony Ryan, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said in a post on PlayStation Blog. Ryan said that access to the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita, launched in 2006 and 2011 respectively, will continue.
“When we first made the decision to end purchasing support for the PS3 and PS Vita, it was born out of a number of factors, including commercial support challenges for older devices and the ability for us to focus more resources on newer devices, where most of our players play, ”Ryan said. “We now see that many of you are incredibly passionate about being able to continue to buy 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.”
However, the window for the PlayStation Portable (dating back to 2004) will be closed on July 2, 2021, as originally planned. PSP owners already had very limited access to the storefront (on a platform that has not been accepted since 2014).
When Sony confirmed the closure in late March, PS3 and PS Vita owners were worried about their digital collections, despite Sony’s assurances that all previously purchased content could still be downloaded for those platforms. But if he hadn’t bought extra DLC for a PS3 game, for example, he wouldn’t be able to do this even if he had and enjoyed the main game.
Players would no longer be able to redeem gift cards through these devices and all the money in their PSN wallet accounts would only be available to buy PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 content.