‘We made the wrong decision’ says Sony over PS3 and PS Vita online store closures

In an embarrassing U-turn, Sony has reversed its decision to close the online stores for the PS3 and PS Vita, but not the PSP.

Despite all the money and marketing executives, video game companies routinely make stupid decisions, which they’re then later forced to U-turn on.

From the Xbox One always-online debacle to the entirety of the Wii U, big companies regularly make mistakes that it seems even the most casual of gamer would have quickly advised against. And that includes Sony’s decision to shutdown the online stores for the PlayStation 3, PS Vita, and PSP.

Apart from anything, the timing was almost comically bad, coming just as Microsoft was emphasising its very different approach to backwards compatibility and game preservation. But, better late than never, Sony has realised their error and reversed the decision.

Writing on the PlayStation Blog, Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan admitted that, ‘Upon further reflection … it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here.’

‘Today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices. PSP commerce functionality will retire on July 2, 2021 as planned,’ he announced.

According to Ryan, the original decision 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’.

That doesn’t really seem to mean much other than Sony was looking to save a bit of money by not supporting old formats anymore, a spot of penny-pinching that has caused a severe PR headache.

With the PSP shutting down in July that means dozens of games will still become impossible to acquire legally, which will be a particular issue in Japan where the PlayStation Portable was extremely popular.

Ryan did not address the issue that PlayStation 3 patches have already begun disappearing from the online store, although at the very least that problem shouldn’t now get any worse.

Even so, it’s clearly a PR victory for Microsoft, where they didn’t have to do anything at all, and it’ll be interesting to see if in the future Sony shows more deference to the idea of preserving the games of older formats and embracing backwards compatibility as a benefit and not a burden.

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