A report published Monday said the PlayStation Store for Sony’s PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and the PlayStation Portable will close for good in July and August, making digital copies of games for those platforms unavailable for purchase from then on.
TheGamer, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, said the PS3 and PSP stores will close on July 2, and the PS Vita’s storefront will shut down Aug. 27. Polygon reached out to Sony representatives for additional information; no reply was made at publication time.
Vita and PS3-only games are, for now, accessible only through the PlayStation Store app on both units. Those platforms are not searchable from the PlayStation Store’s website and haven’t been available there since a (not well-liked) redesign in October.
Sony phased out the PS3 over several regions between 2015 and 2016 before formally discontinuing the console in May 2017. The PlayStation Vita, which launched in the winter of 2011-2012, was shut down in March 2019.
The closure of the PlayStation Store presents more of an issue for PS Vita users, considering how many of that platform’s notable games were indie-developed and sold online. Direct backward compatibility with PlayStation 3 from PlayStation 4 and 5 is not available (in the way many Xbox 360 and earlier games are supported on Xbox One and Xbox Series X). But PS4 ports of some PS3 games are available (as separate products), and still other PS3 (and PS2) games are streamable to modern consoles from the PlayStation Now subscription service.
