PS3 & Vita Stores Will Now Stay Open, PSP Store Shutdown Still Planned

Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan has announced that Sony is reversing its previous decision to close down the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita digital stores. Towards the end of last month, Sony had announced that it would be closing the PS3, PlayStation Portable (PSP), and Vita digital storefronts, but now, only the PSP storefront closure on July 2 will continue as planned. The PS3 and Vita digital stores will remain open.

“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,” explained Jim Ryan. “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.”

This is great as now players retain access to PlayStation’s legacy content until further notice. But there’s always the chance that they will close permanently in the future, as the PSP digital store is still being closed.

This isn’t the first time public pressure influenced one of the main gaming platforms to reverse a decision. Earlier this year, Xbox received enough backlash for the decision to increase Xbox Live Gold subscription prices that it was ultimately walked backed.