After the backlash to their original announcement of shutting down the online PS3 and PS VITA stores shut down, Sony has taken its decision back and has announced that the online stores will not be shut down. Both the PS3 and PS VITA stores will continue to work normally and players will be able to purchase games and DLC available on the stores and download their titles and their updates without any problems.
This was announced by Jim Ryan on the official PlayStation blog where he stated that ‘we made the wrong decision here’. However it is worth noting here that only PS3 and PS VITA stores will remain online, the PSP store is still slated to shut down on July 2, 2021, so players still have time to purchase their favorite titles digitally or get any DLC that they want to for their games before the store is shut down forever.
Jim Ryan further continued that the original decision was made because of the online store support challenges that the company faces for keeping older stores running and their decision to use the resources on newer devices where the current majority of gamers are playing at. Right after their initial announcement, Sony was faced with backlash from both gamers and critics from around the world about not contributing towards video game preservation. With Xbox finding more and more ways to preserve its legacy, Sony on the other hand was all about cutting short of its titles and shutting down developers and stores.
However, as of now, PS3 and PS VITA titles have a second life, and players can continue to access the stores for now at least. Sony has not said whether this decision is permanent or not however we can be happy for now that the stores are not at least shutting down in summer this year. On the other hand, if you have some PSP titles still in your backlog, now is the time to go and purchase them and add them to your library because once the store is shut down, you will not have access to them anymore.
For the official statement, you can check out the official blog post.
