A report released Monday says the PlayStation Store will close for Sony’s PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable in July and August for good, making digital copies of games for the platforms unavailable.
TheGamer, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, said the PS3 and PSP stores will close on July 2, and that the PS Vita’s store window will close on August 27. Polygon contacted Sony representatives for more information; no response was given at publication time.
Vita and PS3 games are currently only accessible via the PlayStation Store app on both devices. Those platforms are not searchable from the PlayStation Store website and have not been available there since a (not very popular) redesign in October.
Sony phased out the PS3 across several regions between 2015 and 2016 before the console was formally discontinued in May 2017. The PlayStation Vita, which launched in the winter of 2011-2012, closed in March 2019.
The closure of the PlayStation Store presents a bigger problem for PS Vita users, as many of the standout games on the platform have been indie-developed and sold online. Direct backward compatibility with PlayStation 3 from PlayStation 4 and 5 is not available (as supported by Xbox 360 and earlier games 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 can be streamed from the PlayStation Now subscription service to modern consoles.