Rumor: PS3, Vita, and PSP Stores to be permanently closed this year
Emulators and Homebrew might be the only way for the PS Vita in the future
News site TheGamer reports that Sony will be closing the PS Vita, PS3, and PSP stores this summer, citing anonymous but verified sources close to the subject. They say:
PSP’s and PS3’s stores are to be closed on July 2, while the PS Vita store will stay open until August 27. After those dates, you will no longer be able to purchase digital copies of games or DLC for any of the Sony consoles mentioned above.
The PS3 and Vita store can only be accessed from the devices themselves, currently, as Sony had removed them from general web access a while ago. It seems the next step is coming sooner than anybody wanted.
Although the article specifically mentions the stores, and the possibility to purchase games, it is unclear what will happen to digital games you already own, or, maybe even more concerning, games that are part of the Playstation Plus program. We can only hope that Sony won’t want to alienate their most loyal customers, and that those downloads will remain available to people who have previously purchased content, or to people who have been Playstation plus subscribers for a while.
It’s also possible, (but unlikely?) that Sony will only give users a few months to download the games they want to keep, and then remove the download functionality as well.
For the PS vita, in particular, this brings questions as a lot of games where only ever published in digital version, and might become inaccessible except through Vita Custom Firmwares and piracy. This also raises eyebrows regarding the future of the PS5, for all gamers who chose to go with the “digital” (disc-less) edition. Will their console see the same kind of fate and become unusable in less than a decade?
Gaming website Polygon state that Sony haven’t replied to attempts to reach out for further comments. We probably won’t see any official statement until the actual announcement, which is planned for this week or the next, according to TheGamer’s sources.
Source: TheGamer
What will that mean for PS+ Titles on those devices? Or will they still have access to servers for activation purposes?
Another reason why physical media is better. With Digital you never truly own the game. I hope Sony offers a solution to past digital customers.
you can lose digital version, break…
Digital version you can copy
I always dump my digital games. Regular cstomers with unmodified consoles should still prefer digital media if they care about their games.
I mean PHYSICAL lol
This is why I’ve always considered digital purchases as merely a glorified rental system. Like, I find it easier to spend money on digital items when I think of it like “ok, so I can spent $10 to rent this game for 10-15 years”.
That said, between spending full price on a digital game or spending the same amount on a physical version, I’ll always choose physical. But if the price for a digital copy of an older game is right and it’s for a game that I can still find elsewhere, then the $10-$20 price tag to basically rent the game for a decade or two is perfectly acceptable to me.
Physical or digital is almost moot at this point for some games as they are unplayable without patches. Definitely nice for complete editions though.
Hahahahah that’s so fuking true. Who cares if you got the disc day 1? You still need to download the day 1 patch probably and if the servers are kapoot then what next?
Shoutout to the games where the unpatched physical release offers something, whether it’s patched bugs/skips like Mario Odyssey or 60 FPS like Last Guardian
It’s bad enough that they are trampling our rights by not allowing us to resell digital licenses (first sale doctrine).
I think there needs to be a law requiring publishers to either continue offering re-downloads of previously purchased games or offer refunds.
Or at least completely remove any and all DRM.
If you bought digital and have any desire to retain and replay PS3 games? You got what you deserved. Well, you actually deserved worse, but, you still got what you had coming.
I agree if they paid full price on the digital version, assuming it’ll be just like how physical copies work and that their ownership will last forever. Speaking of which, anyone buying a digital-only PS5 is gonna get a seriously painful lesson on this in 15-20 years.
But if they were like me and bought digital games understanding that it’s really more of a glorified rental system which will end some day, then I would say the money was well spent. That said, its only worth it if they’re charging “rental” prices; I feel its a fair value between both spending $20 to keep a physical game as well as $5 to essentially rent a digital game for the life of the online store (~15-20 years).
About time! Time to move on.
Just another shame on Sony, nothing new..
Can we still use the PKGJ if the ps vita store close?
Nope, PKJ rely on official sony zeus server
Yes because those games arent pulled from the PSN.
If that’s right, mo problem here
Actually, you can still access the old store from the web. Yes, it isn’t updated and new titles aren’t being added anymore but for those older games that you want to access it’s perfect. You can access it by attaching “?smcid=psapp” GET parameter to the URL like so: https://store.playstation.com/?smcid=psapp
I’ve foreseen this to be a problem yearsago ever since i bought my 1st digital game : harmony of despair (because it isn’t available on physical disc). Now it’s become a reality. If the HDD on my PS3 crashes and the PS3 store is gone, how do get my games back?
Its worth checking what has happened to the PSP since its store has already been closed off
unfortunately mine has always been jailbroken
does this mean no paystation will be affected?
this is a major issue sony and nintendo have, I will say microsoft has been alot better with it. but any digital console needs to be hacked for this reason, the removal of games and purchases goes against game preservation
Those asking or claiming that pkgi/ will work after the rumored shutdown date: we don’t know. This will all depend on how thorough of a shutdown will take place. Best case scenario assuming the rumor is true is that the games are still downloadable after the shutdown date, however, it is possible that the downloads for pre-purchased games will also go offline which would render the current pkgi setup unusable. You would need a third party repo to service those requests.
PS Vita is still an 8th generation console. They must close it along with PS4. That’s a VERY WRONG move.
Yeah but the Vita is an effectively dead platform rife with hacked consoles used to pirate games (or so Sony believes)… so it’s probably just so Sony doesn’t have to spend anymore time and resources on a dead console when they’re ready to move on. I dont agree with them, but that’s prolly what they think.
I got email. Don’t worry – you can download all games, but don’t buy new. PKG downloaders should work fine 😛