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PlayStation has made a reversal on their previous decision to shut down the PS Vita and PS3 store, following fan backlash.
In a blog post, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan acknowledged the faux pas, saying the two storefronts would remain operational for the foreseeable future.
“Recently, we notified players that PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita devices was planned to end this summer”, his statement reads. “Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here. So today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices”.
Ryan also didn’t mince words, saying the previous decision to close the stores was one of financial pragmatism:
“When we initially came to the decision to end purchasing support for PS3 and PS Vita, it was born out of a number of factors, including commerce support challenges for older devices and the ability for us to focus more of our resources on newer devices where a majority of our gamers are playing on”, he says.
“We see now that many of you are incredibly passionate about being able to continue purchasing 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.”
While the majority of gamers would have moved on to the PS4 or even PS5 consoles, it’s not like the PS3 store is completely barren. Just last month, Skullgirls PS3 release received its final update, something that it wouldn’t have been able to do had the store been shut down.
The Argument For Conservation
Even if the PS3 isn’t the season’s hottest console anymore, many critics extoll the importance of keeping the storefront alive for conservation purposes. The idea of this is simple- since the PS4 was famously not backwards compatible with its predecessor, many digital-only games on the PS3 would simply not exist anymore if the storefront went down.
A great example of this would be Darkstalkers Resurrected, Capcom’s HD re-release of the Darkstalker series. The series has been quiet for many years now, with series face Morrigan only appearing in crossover titles. If you were, say, a tournament organizer, the PS3 store would be your main method of having enough copies of the game to run a tournament.
It’s not all niche third-party titles, either. While the Last of Us will continue to be remade for every console, some first party games got left behind in the jump to PS4. One example of this is PlayStation AllStars Battle Royale. The platform fighter was never ported outside of the PS3 and PSVita, and had a healthy roster of DLC characters such as Zeus (God of War) or Isaac Clarke (Dead Space).Had PlayStation not backed down on closing the PS3 and Vita stores, the game wouldn’t have an avenue to keep existing anymore.
