Sony Backtracks PS3, PS Vita Online Store Closures

Yes, it's good sometimes sony is listening to it's fan

I hope sony has plan to sells ps1/ps2/ps3/psp/psvita games in ps5 store.

And my stress for fullsetting the PAL ps3 physical set for a reasonable price is gone.

I’m genuinely but pleasantly shocked.

Hopefully this might spark some more PS3 game discounts, if Sony is still allowing them.

Great news and just goes to show that it's perfectly fine to both support and criticise the decisions made by developers and companies that you like.

Glad to see that Sony is listening to feedback

Thanks for listening, Sony!

Not that this affects me personally but I like it that they can admit it was a wrong decision - which it obviously was, considering that Vita dev kit story.

Excellent news. Remember this when someone says you shouldn't complain or voice your opinion.

Imagine all the people now who have spent much money the past few days on PS3 and PS Vita games cause they thought they were gone by summer

Sony have sense after all!

Maybe they might even make some money if they got off their backsides and updated them.
My PS3 still tries to sell me PS Plus.

Two things:

1. PlayStation deserves no applause for this. Never should have happened in the first place.

2. This is why it's important to criticize things you love and not be a blind defendor.

I wonder how much money Sony made from people panic buying PS3 and Vita games. I bet it's more money than it ever would have made had it not announced the closures...

They probably saw the large sales influx of people buying games while they could, saw the revenue stream and then changed their minds.
This is purely a financial decision (albeit one that benefits us gamers at least)
Means voting with your wallet really does work.

Even though this shouldn't have happened in the first place, I'm glad everyone screaming about this got to their heads and forced them to change their minds. Well done for reversing course at least. I bet activity on these stores rapidly surged after the initial announcement

Haha, good choice. Even made an extra buck with the pre-closure panic purchases.

All that happened was sony realised, hey people still want this age old stuff 🤑🤑🤑 easy money with little to no effort 🤔

@The_New_Butler Just like Sony announcing they parted ways with Marvel Studios on producing Spider-Man films surely was never a pre-calculated decision that they weren't aware would receive major backlash

@mariomaster96 Why would you be salty you have games you really want so whats the issue?

Looks like people are still buying PS3 and Vita games on PS Store, after all.

That was a nice boost in sales they had for a couple of weeks

I’m very pleased. Also very surprised, but very pleased too! Wonder how long this stay of execution will be for ...?

But now all those vita devs that had to cancel their projects?

That's... legitimately pretty surprising. The backlash must been stronger than they were expecting.

Well, good on them! It's not like Nintendo ever listened to fans when they snuffed out an entire library of games by closing the Wii Shop channel to purchases.

Gutted that I could have waited for my income to be more stable before blowing a considerable amount on the store. I wonder if my £150 over the last weekend was the turning point that made them realise the store was still profitable 😂

@The_New_Butler Yes let's definitely have that refund discussion 😂

Excellent news, but this is just the beginning. We all know the PS3 is the so called "ugly duckling" of the PS family (given how it is the only console to not cross 100 million units sold worldwide), but the PSN started on said console. If Sony is finding it difficult to keep it alive due to technological reasons etc., they must find a way to integrate it into more modern technologies. But removing it should never be an option.

Well they sure pulled one on me, I just spent a good 200 bucks a few weeks ago for the sake of getting the stuff I still wanted from the store, good on you Sony, good on you.

But nonetheless I'm happy that the store stays for now, the PS1 & PS2 offerings in there are quite decent and imho make the PS3 very much worth owning still.

Excellent news. However to be fair, I’m going to say the exact same thing I did when Microsoft attempted to double the price of Live only to reverse it after heavy criticism: this comes off as Sony not knowing what the heck they are doing.

I thought they had some kind of plan in place to preserve these legacy games in the future, but turns out it was just a hastily boneheaded decision after all. Glad it’s reversed.

@ShogunRok exactly. So many people spent money the past few weeks. Only thing stopping me is a) my already ridiculous backlog and b) they never really did confirm how long you can continue to download games

I long ago packed up my PS3 (and only still have my PS4 out until the ps5 has 3D film functionality) but I would buy VITA games if they ever went on sale. Not spending £50 on a 10 year old VITA game though.

Good FOMO-tactics from Sony to push digital sales figures

Woah woah woah. Let's not think Sony did this entirely out of the goodness of their big corporate hearts, yeah?

I reckon this is motivated by the fact they changed the servers prior to shutdown, it caused a bunch of new problems, and that combined with the bad press made Sony realise it was easier to just revert all changes, like what happens after a bad game patch (revert to previous working version). It was probably cheaper to rollback like that. Probably the extra profit from all the additional sales that wouldn't have existed prior to the announcement of the closure didn't hurt, either.

I'd like to credit this as "listening to fans" but I think that's just a pleasant side effect. Usually big companies just make decisions like this based on "what makes most profit and minimises overheads".

"Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here."

Translates to

"Upon further reflection, our devs told us it would cost more to fix the problems than it would to revert and keep the stores open, so that's what we went with. Thanks for all the extra sales chaps, we thought some might panic buy, in fact we were counting on it. Also, you're welcome, suckers." 😂

I hope we see a PS3 store sale. I want to buy the Ratchet & clank trilogy and Puppeteer.

I do wonder how this will affect any of those cancelled Vita games too. Will they get back on track having lost a few weeks development time? Or will they just can it off altogether

Hooray! Poor @ralphdibny though, so much money down the drain 😂

Good on them for reversing their decision.

@Flaming_Kaiser Well maybe they bought them while they were NOT on sale while otherwise the would have waited till they are on sale?

@nessisonett 😂 I will find you...

@ShogunRok They probably made a tidy sum from closure announcement anxiety, but I bet that cash flow shut off immediately after they announced their change of heart. Which makes sense, because now we all have an infinite amount of time to buy these games. Yup, all the time in the world...

Bad troll you, Sony.

@ralphdibny Hahahaha at least I got my money back 😭

@wiiware @wiiware maybe the reason why they are reactivating PS3 is because that’s the problem to emulate. Ps1 and ps2 would be nice. With trophies. But that would probably be a nightmare to implement. Per game basis.

Bloody hell! Ryan and Sony actually did the decent thing! Ryan looks more and more ridiculous for stating 'we believe in generations' by the day. I hope they learnt their lesson. Onwards and upwards.

@nessisonett ah it's ok really, I probably won't get really annoyed until they announce a sale on all those games I bought 👀

Is there a poll someone can put up on this site asking how many people actually still use a PS3 or PSP/vita??

I say USE rather than OWN and if you do I'd like to know how often, because its got to be very small minority considering how many PS4s sold! I played a PS3 about a year ago and it was terrible, surely people don't subject themselves to that these days when PS4s are so cheap now. The handheld consoles I can understand slightly more as there isn't a upgrade for them as such.

@Ralizah Probably also the timing of the Xbox news. Sony were like "screw Playstation's legacy" and very soon after Microsoft were like "we value Xbox's legacy a lot, here's the first batch of Xbox 360 games coming to xCloud".

As we've seen plenty of times in the past, the combination of the fanbase and the competitor platform can change a lot when it comes to really anti-consumer decisions like Don Mattrick XB1 vision and no crossplay on PS4.

YES! Now I don't have to worry about buying certain games before summer! 💯

@HMazzy111 PS4 isn’t really an upgrade, it can’t play dead space, it can play dragon age origins, it can’t play god of war ascension

@RBMango maybe it’s important to applaud the admission of mistake?

There are some things worth fighting for. This was one of them.

@HMazzy111 I'd like that. I still use my Vita. Over the weekend I was playing The Pinball Arcade which still looks and plays great, especially with the overclocking home-brew to push the FPS up on the more complex/poorly optimised tables.

Now about those UK game prices?

Haha 😶🤪 I just spent a lot of money to grab some physical copies of ps vita games I purchased digitally to ensure I can still play them in the future! Still happy I got them and happy of Sony’s decision to listen to us!

This is great news!

Glad to see Sony listened and reversed their decision.

And people say Sony is so big and mean and bad and they never listen.

@KayOL77 I payed so €90 for Parasite Eve in near mint edition. If they will sell me a complete package with trophy support ill probably buy it again. 🤪

@Robinsad PS4 is still an upgrade regardless of whether there's certain games you can't play on it. If you want to play those games then fair enough but I gave it go with within variety of games and I found it almost unplayable compared to PS4 and now PS5.

@DeepSpace5D how could they have known what everybody wanted before stating the decision? PS3 is 2 gens old.

Turns out crying very loudly (I was part of that crying crowd) will sometimes work, I say this especially to some people here who don't want anyone complaining to Sony about anything. I give full credit to Sony for changing it's mind no matter how they go there ✌️

@HMazzy111 60fps entire ratchet and clank collection. 60fps entire god of war collection.

How about making these PS1 titles playable on PS5? Like how hard could it before those of us who own them digitally to access them on new consoles?

@KayOL77 Pretty sure I didn’t say anything of the sort. I said I thought they had some type of plan to preserve these legacy games in the future if they were closing the store.

Mark Cerny has recently filed some patents that had to do with backwards compatibility so I was thinking they would see a return in the future somehow through BC or PSNow or something along those lines. But just walking it back now looks like they had no plan to preserve legacy games and were just making a clearly hasty decision.

@KayOL77 They are names of games, yes? What are you saying? Use your words.

personally i wasnt lamenting the shutting of the stores so much as ive already brought all the ps3 games and dlc i wanted years ago.

It’s the right decision. For now at least.

Oh hey look a positive comment from me. Nice sony saved the Ps3 store front but i am still buying the games i really want though.

Fantastic news!!

Now we can all go back to not buying anything from the PS3 & Vita stores like before.

@Flaming_Kaiser I never played it mate, but always heard good things. Mind you I wonder how ps1 would look on a 65” telly. 🤔

Wait did our pleads actually WORK!?

@KayOL77 @themightyant I vehemently refuse to applaud nor forgive a multi-billion dollar corporation for backtracking on a horrible, potentially damaging decision. This doesn't erase the facts that Sony did not care about giving advance notice to many small devs working on Vita titles, they still don't have a proper solution to backwards compatibility for legacy titles, and they tried to release this announcement in a low-key manner via a buried forum post and quick email. They knew exactly what they were doing and it thankfully blew up in their stupid faces. The gaming industry operates on the masses forgetting the terrible things they try to pull because of how quickly news drops these days, but I'll remember. Hindsight is 20/20 and all, but Ryan at the very least should have known how bad this was going to look. Anyone with half a brain could have seen the backlash coming.

Sucks we had to go through all this turmoil, but good on Sony for making the call. This is also just a friendly reminder that of just how risky an all digital future really is.

@HMazzy111 sorry for assuming you’d make the leap. Those games are some of the reasons to play PS3. Clearer?

@RBMango no applauding corrective behaviour. Yes. That’s a good societal message.

Good news, glad to see the outpouring of objections appears to have had an effect.

Cue more “Top Ten Games To Buy On PSP Before The Store Closes” videos though.

@TrueAssassin86x I would advise you don’t buy the games you don’t want. 🤣. Applause for the positive message though. 🙏

@KayOL77 Individuals, sure. I strongly believe in that. Corporations made up of educated business people who should know PR 101? Nope.

Why not give the option to play ps3 games on ps4 or ps5 instead of that crappy streaming service

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.

The ending Quote from Jim when he says [we’re always listening and appreciate the support from our PlayStation community."] is nothing but a lie .

If they were truly listening to fans they would of also reversed the decision putting a price hike on all of their 1st party exclusives .

Sony will not get any kudos from me correcting a bad decision .

I'm kind of in two minds on this issue - on the one hand, it's great that a whole bunch of people can continue buying & playing their digital games.

On the other hand, PS3's are incredibly susceptible to the yellow light of death, and any PS3 that's actually had a fair amount of use is a ticking time bomb at this point - it'd be far more useful overall if Sony took backwards compatibility seriously.

Me personally though, I've long moved on from PS3 after mine died - a lot of my favourite games I've either since bought on PC, or bought the PS4 version, and I can neither confirm nor deny whether I've also messed about with emulators

I want a PS3 now. 🤷‍♂️

That stuff wasn't costing them much. Jim was out here trying to save pennies. They made a good profit off the situation I bet though. Now redesign that damn trash webstore. Yes, since Jim actually posted in the blog, I took the time to bitch about this stuff in the comment section. We need to stop apologizing for this company when they try to take stuff away from us.

As an owner of PS3 and Vita that stiil both are being used, I love this. And I think it's good for Jim Ryan, whom I believe can use a bit of positive publicity.

Oh wow!!!!! Wonder if they have already burned too many bridges with developers on vita or whether those games in development will be saved. Sony must have recognised the groundswell of support and noticed the huge amounts of money they were generating from panic buying and recognised the value in retaining these storefronts.

Massive, and pleasant news for a change. Particularly on a day when football has gone mad, its refreshing to hear that big business does sometimes listen

@RBMango it just appears that nobody talking about PS3 and possibly next to no sales for it, Sony saying it’s done, people saying no wait!! Sony says ok we will leave it open. People f••k you Sony!

It's obviously a good thing when companies listen to their customers. However, allow me to present a rather tongue in cheek prediction for the future:
-Sony announce closure of the PS3 and Vita stores.
-Customers get upset and say they still want to be able to buy games.
-Sony says okay, we will allow you to continue buying these games as you've made it clear you still want them.
-Nobody buys any PS3 or Vita games.
-Sony adopts old man stance and vigorously shakes fist.

@PossibLeigh 🤣. Yes. In a rapidly evolving and also entropic universe, permanence should be mandated.

I actually had my brother to send me his PS Vita since he doesn’t even play. I was gonna download some games on there. Well, I can still buy these games at anytime I want now.

That's shocking! That was a massive self-inflicted wound right in the PR, but I'm glad they managed to take their head out of their rears and actually listen to customers (and devs) for a change.

@ArcadeHeroes Jim Ryan is the devil? Yikes. What does that make Mr Gates 🤣

@Marquez On the other hand, plenty of people here (and ps gamers in general who don't frequent such sites) are not ungrateful or salty. I'd focus on those, if I were Sony.

Well that allows me to stagger some planned purchases a little more.

Question, will PSP titles still be available to buy on the PS3 & Vita stores though?

Here we go. People giving Sony credit for not being anti-consumer. They shouldn’t have made the decision in the first place.

@helloim_anthony the PS3 is extremely awkward to emulate and requires more heft. Although it might work on games that don’t leverage the cell too thoroughly. Naughty dog as an example.

@Loftimus ha! Not a chance 🤣🤣🤣

Sony are not THAT generous lol

@huyi we shall see....

@Ralizah Here we go with the deflecting instead of holding Sony accountable like most PlayStation fans. Maybe no one told you but people were pissed about that too. Just about every Wii Shop channel game made it to the 3DS and Wii U if you didn’t know & both systems are backwards compatible with Wii & DS games.

@Robinsad Lilymo Games has said on twitter that they are going to chat to Sony to see if the cut off for submitting games has been extended and if so, they will

Now if they would just do something about those CMOS batteries.

Well the good news is that with all companies competing, we as consumers have some push back. Companies have to think twice about certain decisions; Live doubling, Vita store closing etc.

Also, The bulk of the PSP library is physical, it’s sad but reasonable.I just hope now the Vita devs can publish their games.

No shi🤔 you made the wrong decision jim ryan we the people fans of PlayStation made this happens.word up son

@Akurusu how would you hold them accountable? Not buying PS3 games?

Holy snip, Sony is capable of listening! I am genuinely surprised.

Now we have to yell at them to please, please, please put classic games on PS5. I want to be able to play P4 Golden and Xenogears on my PS5.

@Solidocelot with regard to CMOS and ps3 apparently you can still play disc games on a ps3 with a dead CMOS and no network connection

Hilarious to see the fandom pat its own head in the comments when Sony's "reconsideration" is almost certain to stem from the feedback of the people entitled to criticizing the previous decision most - the devs and publishers, including everyone caught completely off guard mid-development on the Vita front. Nonetheless, good news. Gotta wonder if this will make Atlus and some others restore the recent advance bailouts like Utawarerumono and Dungeon Travelers 2 or if they're not looking back now... but until/unless the titles in question show up on Switch, I'll strongly hope for the former. In any case, that's quite a wallet emergency alleviated on my part, but it remains a wake-up call as far as a good bunch of Vita-compatible games are concerned. Still planning some investment come July (and possibly May), regardless of sales.

Hahahahaha, Jim Ryan fails again! The gamers have spoken! 😄😄😄

That was an incredibly stupid decision that Sony even flirted with to shut these stores down.

P.S. FIRE RYAN!

Holly crap, they do listen! We did it guys!!!!

@RBMango Well said!

@Solidocelot Can’t we just...replace them?

@EVIL-C should we fire Phil spencer too for proposing increasing Xbox live fee?

Cool I prefer this "backtrack of shame" over a company that's so far up its own *** it won't listen cause it knows it's fans will just gobble anything up like nintendo

I hope they also "figure out" a way to let you play your ps3 games on ps5 because i spent $100 in the ps3 store cause of this little ordeal lmao

Do they still sell PS3 slims brand new?

@Akurusu Holding Sony accountable for... reversing a bad decision, and owning up to that being a bad decision in a public statement?

The power of media and journalism 👍🏼🎤📷

@get2sammyb @ShogunRok
Thank you for criticising Sony's unfriendly decisions.

@KayOL77 devil 2.0 XD

YES!!!! Finally some saveface from a terrible leadership. I really hope the correct their course.

The old “going out of business” trick strikes again.

@helloim_anthony I’m assuming your referring to psplus. You do stream PS3. All PS4 games are downloadable.

Amazing news! Thank you so much for listening to the fans, Jim!

@ArcadeHeroes Fortunately his name totals 666 in ascii 🤣

An unexpected move from Jim "Why Would Anyone Play This?" Ryan. At the very least, I hope this has taught him that yes, people DO want to play old games regardless of whether they have photorealistic graphics or not!

Sucks that he still isn't extending the date of the PSP closure. Come on, give them a year at least!

@KayOL77 That was incredibly stupid. Otherwise, Phil is much more competent than Ryan.

We found the Jim Ryan fanboy, it seems. Defend the guy who hates retro games and scoffs at preserving Sony's legacy. Bravo, man. 👏😑

While people like David Jaffe will obviously not like this, personally I just hope this helped Sony to understand more about game preservation. I wouldn't even mind if they add many of these PS1, PS2 and PS3 games through PSNow.

@EVIL-C I’m applauding the reversal. How is Phil spencer more competent than Jim Ryan. I would like to know your thoughts there?

Sony keeping stores open for machines two generations old... Jim Ryan out!

@danlk1ng Super Slim PS3's seldom get YLoD, disc read errors are the main issues with those, but if you have a mostly digital collection that isn't a problem.

The real issue is the lack of decent controllers for the console since official controllers are nowhere to be found and quality third party controllers are as rare as unicorn poop lol. 😂

@TowaHerschel7 I’ll buy one and a hd extension for digital then! Cheers.

When the noise is loud enough, the people in their ivory towers will hear us. First with the xblive price increase, now with this. Yes, not making the mistake to begin with, is nice, but backtracking is just as good, sometimes.

@PhhhCough ironically, apparently it was ps players who shut down the ms price hike. I wonder if xb players had a say in keeping PS3 alive? 🤣

THANK YOU SO MUCH. Ive lots of digital games on my ps3 i still muck about on it my launch ps3 is still chugging along. i maintained it over the years cleaning it and changing the paste and always looking for better ways of keeping it cool, i saw a laptop fan installed cooling the power supply lol this is sooo cool thank you sony.

@ShogunRok Will you still be able to purchase PSP games on the Vita?

woww. I did not see this coming but well done Sony. This news can only have a positive impact rather then negative. 👏

@djape Don’t applaud the reversal of a bad decision with a good one encouraged by feedback! How are we meant to progress into chaos and nihilism if you do that!!! 🤣

Vita about to become The PS history preservation machine. Need to get my hands on one again.

The difference between Game Companies and Nintendo. They actually listen to fans and reverse decisions. Good on you Sony.

I did panic buy one digital only game (though it is physical in the US) but was going to slowly buy games over the few months before the closure to spread my cost.

Now that the decision has been reversed has me reflecting on getting more games for the system like ps1 and 2 classics and more digital only games but allows me far more time to get said games.

I am very happy Sony didn’t listen to the people that said so what. We don’t play old games. Many of us do and this is very welcome news by Sony.

@Jaz007 @ShogunRok I was wondering the same thing...

This is the best Sony news we've heard in awhile. Its great to see the power of the fan base come together and force change.

The most important thing here in my opinion is that we will still be able to update the games that need patches and download games we've paid money for.

There has to be some reassurance that we can trust them to provide access to our games and updates if they want us to invest in the digital future. I'm not sure I will ever be happy paying money for digital games, but the previous decision to close the store, with patches going AWOL, really killed any hope of me going digital outside of subs and free games.

Wouldn't be surprised if they announced the shut down only for them to back out of the decision just so they can earn more when people are panic buying games for their Vita and PS3.

Seriously though, glad they retracted the decision.

Something about the way this guy speaks is off putting. I doubt he really gets the point of keeping these stores open either. He's just covering his hide after the colossal screw up, which was obviously a bad choice from the outset.

@KayOL77 If modder in their basement can make ps1/ps2/psp emulators thats works in smartphone, I'm sure sony can have BC on ps5. I have no problem if sony leaves ps3 BC and focusing on ps1/ps2/psp/psvita.

@KayOL77 ye I get ya point, but with the news so rare like this, you got give them a little credit.

@djape thanks for continuing the gag 🤣

@TowaHerschel7 You can use a PS4 controller with your PS3. Not all games are compatible though.

@wiiware Totally. I would like trophies in the old games too but just having the games to be played would be enough. There’s so much potential for ps1 and ps2 games especially on ps5. The tech is already there. Even newer PS3s emulate 1 and 2. Just transfer this system as is on ps5 thank you very much!

@KayOL77

@wiiware Sony loves to do double or triple dipping, rereleasing games multiple times. The "emulating PS3 is hard guys" excuse is weak. Release remasters of your PS3 exclusive Sony or at least put them on PC, just like you did with Vita.

Btw, you can play PS1 games with trophies on PC, go to retroachievements.org.

@TowaHerschel7 Yes, you should still be able to buy PSP games via your PS3 or your Vita, then download it on your PSP via your download list.

It's clunky but should works.

The only problem is I remember that for some reason, not every PSP games I wanted to buy for my Vita were showing on the Vita Store. I bought them back in january/february while the old web store was still operational. I didn't test it with the PS3 store, so maybe you can still find everything with that store.

Do note that several great PSP games are delisted (in North America at least). Every games from Sting developer except Gungnir are gone. Others notable delisted include Brave Story, R-Type command and WipeOut Pure. Also, some of the best games were never offered digitally: FF7 crisis core and Valkyrie Profile Lenneth are top 10 material imho.

@Turbodream Thats interesting. How many ps1 games have trophies? Each game would require some decompiling to some degree I think. But if this work has already been done Sony just needs to get access to these already achieved endeavours 🤣

I'm genuinely relieved, but Sony isn't done making horrible decisions. I'm afraid we're going to have fight Jim Ryan every step of the way from here on out. All Sony cares about now is money and huge Metacritic tent-pole titles. But maybe, just maybe, they can still learn some humility, support their players, and get back to making good games of all sizes.

@Old-Red I'm still going to put all my PS3 collection in my console this year to be sure I have all the patches/updates I can get. It's a good excuse to try everything. I don't trust Sony anymore about their legacy content, I'm glad for the delay but I think the PS3 (and Vita) will go bye bye in 1 to 3 years.

@KayOL77 Currently, it's 304 PS1 games with some trophy support implemented via PC emulation. They seems to have most of the bigger games/franchises already: Spyro, Crash, Final Fantasy, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Gran Turismo, Medievil, Tony Hawk, Twisted Metal, Tomb Raider, Tekken, Suikoden, Mega Man, Dino Crisis are all there.

Sony needs to adress the C-Bomb fiasco next before we can really trust them again.

Well as bad decisions go only 2X live price was worse than cutting out legacy hardware with no backwards compatibility mode for the games in a pandemic .
They had to fix it as it was obvious that it's a beyond poor decision
At least they are going to leave it up until the backwards compatibility solutions arrive

Sony had their hand in the cookie jar and got caught basically

@KayOL77 Yes they can be replaced but the potential issue is if Sony no longer supports a system on PSN. Once the battery is replaced it's initial time sync needs done though the PSN.

@trev666 From what I heard aside from the PS3 both the PS4 and PS5 have CMOS chips so there can be potential issues with those consoles in the future. The PS4 won't even play disc games if it's CMOS chip dies. I think this is a customer service thing Sony needs to address.

I am going to backtrack now - I have always liked Jim Ryan Now let us have full PS disc B/C somehow. Hmm, then i'll Marry Jim then

@Ralizah Tell that to the developers who canceled Vita projects in light of the news.

@Akurusu I'm sure said developers are probably pretty elated by the news. If you're developing for the Vita, then you're more than likely a fan of the hardware.

I haven’t met someone that still plays a PS3 in years and a Vita veeeerrryyy little. Kudos to those that still do but I can’t imagine this is a large crowd at all. Not sure why saving this was a big deal but I bet it still closes within the year. Why? Cause all those who wanted to save the store won’t buy anything from it causing it to close anyway.🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️

Nice! I guess there aren't that many PS3 players out there compared to PS4 and PS5, but kudos for Sony for allowing them to keep playing and purchasing games.

That said, I have no clue why Sony would shut it in the first place. They really should offer all of their games forever, build their legacy. And you know, they can iterate on PlayStation Store and keep offering all the products released so far.

Ok Sony good news! So now I’m wondering If anyone out there knows the answer to this question: If I deactivate one of my PS3 systems so I can activate another with a larger hard drive so I can download more games, will I STILL be able to play the games I have downloaded on that deactivated PS3 and will it also still run my physical games on that same deactivated PS3?? 🤔🤔 if anyone knows I’d appreciate the answer before I go ahead and pull the trigger lol 😂

@helloim_anthony - PSNOW runs PS3 games off actual PS3 hardware. they not emulating anything

I think you can have two (2) PS3 systems activated for download games. So you can use and play digital games on both freely. You can also have other PS3 systems (like an old phat) that you use just for games on disc too.

jim ryan is still a nuisance and done more harm than good.

Thank God, that was close

what does that mean for the vita games that were canceled ? hope they still come out

I'm still of the belief that most of the people who complained probably either don't own/use the consoles in question, or were complaining because they might want to use the PS3/Vita Store, but will probably go back to ignoring it now it's no longer going away. Either way, I doubt this reversal will have much impact on people's enjoyment of video games, but congrats on the symbolic win?

Sweet now i can put off buying digimon for a few more years.

i think its been at least a couple of years since the last ps3 game was released going by the fifa 19 advertisements still on the ps3 store

All these people whining about panick buying...how many more years were you gonna vaguely think about those games before buying them? Seriously

Actually, there's probably a fair amount of people waiting for a number of reasons. The DLC bundle for Drakengard 3 is $29. But if the game got remastered for PS4 like Nier, then they would just wait for that. Same for Lords of Shadow or LoS2. Buying these games and all DLC would probably cost more than the cost of a remaster. But with the PS4 gen coming to an end, we now have more clarity on which games are being left behind and if the PS3 store closes then they would be gone for good. So this is a huge issue for people who care about games and owning games and the preservation of games.

I don't care either way but if that makes some people happy it's cool.
I just wish I didn't see so many idiotic 'the Vita is dead' trolling comments and so many 'last nail in the coffin' unhelpfully articles many years ago.

Good decision and one that saves me having to find 'money' to buy stuff I've always thought about playing on my PS3.

Hopefully now they also fix the issue of games on PS3 not receiving updates though!

I only panic bought Suikoden I and II. A sale would be great though jeez. The Vita game prices in the UK are stupid.

@KayOL77 Horrible i can tell you that and i have a 43 inch tv. 🤪

But i would take a HD upgrade like with PSP Final Fantasy game improved textures resolution that kind of stuff.

@Turbodream Well that’s 300 games RAM location points for achievement tracking that can be easily implemented if they collect this already garnered info. A big time save.

Probably made lots of great sales profit these last couple of weeks. Wouldn't be surprised if that was their intention all along.

@Solidocelot it’s a tricky one. How long after a console isn’t being supported should the manufacturer be responsible for its upkeep. If the new consoles weren’t tied so closely with their respective network then they would never have gotten off the ground thanks to competition/piracy. I don’t think I can see a way they could have did this any differently.

Spent an hour explaining this whole situation to my gf last night and how happy I was =L Great news from Sony!

I would say Jim Ryan has gone up in my estimations but I suspect it's a case of a lot of purchases going through the old stores and incredibly bad publicity.
PS3 and Vita stores take no upkeep (as we witnessed recently on the Vita store when it hadn't been updated in about a year) so the decision to close these in the first place was dumb and I lay that at the door of Mr Ryan.

@LiamCroft I don't suppose Mr Ryan has commented about all those games that were going to get Vita ports and then got shelved? Are any of those being un-shelved as we speak or have the devs had it with the current management?

The only thing I want to buy off the PS3 is some PS all stars DLC
Hopefully we get PS3 emulation on PS5 one day

hopefully they improve it! The UK ps3 store is pretty barren, barely any ps1 classics left on there and majority of titles you would want you cant buy. had to make a US account to grab HOTD4 and a few ps1 titles

Over 200 comments and nearly all are glad the stores are staying open. Cool. Of the commenters, how many still play their PS3 and Vita more than a handful of times a year? I still use my PS3 fairly regularly, but that’s because it works great for Netflix on my downstairs tv. The last game I played on the PS3 was probably 1 1/2 months ago—Conan. Played for maybe 15-20 minutes before bed. Then I grabbed the mic for some seriously saucy Singstar sing-song serenading. Alas, I was unsuccessful in wooing the missus. 😋

@jgrangervikings1 Played Conan many years ago and had tons of fun. Reviewers hated it, which reminded me not to take them seriously any more.
As for Singstar, it's always awesome with friends who are into it!

Back to your question, it's been years since the last time I bought a game on ps3 (though I've been playing MOVE games with my niece and godson; the love Sports Champions) and it's been a bit less than a year last time I bought a psv game. I just think that it shouldn't cost Sony too much to keep those stores up for a few more years, even if no one buys any psv/ps3 games anymore.

@Culjoseth I still play my PS3 and Vita. I always see two or three of my friends on PS3 daily and at least eight or nine playing Vita everyday. It's a much larger group than you realize because if someone remote plays PS4 on their Vita is considers them online on PS4 instead of Vita.

@TowaHerschel7 I kinda wish I still had my Vita but then again there hasn’t been a new game that I would play on it for a long time. Remote play was really cool. It works on my phone and iPad but isn’t as enjoyable. Hard to imagine people playing on PS3 if they own PS4/5. Maybe I’m in the minority but when new systems come out, I move on. Haven’t touch my PS4 since Nov 12th.😂

Just put all ps vita games on cheap like £2-£4 and let us suckers go on a permanent shopping frenzy! What's the harm? Sony were going to close it down anyways. Devs may have forgotten ps vita exists but us gamers lap up hot deal sales like crazy... Ahem speaking from personal experience! Steam sales, ps sales... I can... Not... Resist!!!

I'm glad they've made this decision. However, I just don't understand why Sony won't just merge this library with the PS4/PS5 Library. I would love to not have to switch between PSVita, PSTV, and PS3 just to enjoy some classics.

@KidBoruto you can still buy psp games on the ps3 and vita

@navonod18 what do you mean merge? ps3 games aren't playable on the ps4 and ps5.

At least I can get to replay the FFXIII series now. Kinda don't understand how Xbox One got backwards compatibility (and a 4k upgrade if I remember right) for it yet PS4 still has nada. Maybe another one of those pointless remakes are due for ps5, I don't know

I might move on from a console, because it's slow, has a small hard drive, confusing store and ridiculously slow wifi.

But not the games. I don't care about PS3 that much, but I do want to be able to play the games I (digitally) bought.