Reports are saying that Sony is going to close the PS3, PSP, and PS Vita stores this year. By July 2, the PS3 and PSP stores will be gone, and by August 27 so too will the Vita one. This is a tragedy for all those small indie games that don’t have a place anywhere else. Sure, some of them made the transition to PS4, but many didn’t. That’s why I think that if you own these consoles, you need to start downloading all the games you have on them as soon as humanly possible. Stop wasting time, because they’ll be gone forever once the stores are closed.
This move isn’t an unprecedented one from Sony. After all, Nintendo has closed the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS online stores. It makes sense for a company of that size. The stores are taking up valuable server space and energy that could be used in a better way. The servers may also be so old that they’re running at a standard that’s below optimal and may be causing more damage to the environment than is necessary. It’s been more than a decade, it’s definitely time to give up on them.
However, this raises some serious questions about the permanence of those games. When these stores are shut down, they’re just going to disappear into the ether. There won’t be any trace of them left apart from a few online articles and probably some screenshots and videos around the place. It’s such a shame that these little gems won’t have a presence in the games industry anymore. Outside of the files that will sit on a server with the developer, these games could be lost.
This is why it’s so important that we have people in this space that are preserving digital games. It’s also why it’s so essential that you download all the games you can before the stores close. In the future, we’ll be looking back at these games and trying to learn from them. Just as we are now, but hopefully, as long as enough people download the games, we’ll be able to see them better thanks to the work being done right now.