Sony decides to keep PS3 and Vita PlayStation Store access alive instead of shutting it down

DS1 · Apr 19, 2021

Excellent, now I can continue putting off buying Port Royale 3 for another few years.

In all seriousness I wish they would bring back the digital stores (and downloads) for Gran Turismo 5 and 6, as well as bringing back the games removed from the store (Marvel vs Capcom Origins and Marvel vs Capcom 2, and no, it’s not a licensing issue).

AngryCinnabon · Apr 19, 2021

Yeah they clearly did this out of piracy fears, damage control moment

MikaDubbz · Apr 19, 2021

TheChosen said:
And how would they do that? IBM which created the "Cell" decided to discontinue that chip many many years ago dude.

Lol. IBM is now only one step away from becoming a software-only company, only caring for cloud-solutions and well...other software-stuff...Do you even get this?

Also to do this you need a lot of chips. Currently we are living in a chip-crysis...and it just started dude.

Chips are being made lesser and lesser. And they will become tremendously more expensive in the next few months.
IBM won´t be the exception here. It will affect each company, producing chips.

Dude, maybe not dwell on the minutia to a desired scenario that we know isn't actually happening my dude. Though I'm sure if Sony wanted to make more PS3s, they could find/fund a way. And if not, oh well, this is just something I think that should happen, not something I'm declaring is about to happen, dude.

Vila_ · Apr 19, 2021

Sony: "we are removing the store"
Internet: "we can finally pirate games as it's justified!

"
Sony: "did I hear the word pirating? time to bring the store back..."

Rahkeesh · Apr 19, 2021

This is a very weird narrative. How much do you think Sony cares about people pirating games they don't want to sell anyway?

If they did care about classic piracy they could like, introduce actual security to their CDNs like Nintendo did at the end of the 3DS. Right now you can still directly download anything on these systems from Sony without paying a dime. Its significantly more hassle if you have to hunt online especially for obscure archived games on something as niche as the Vita.

zoogie · Apr 19, 2021

It's not piracy, it's bad PR that changed their minds. Companies fear bad publicity more than anything.
If anything, they probably would have had increased legit sales for the PS3/Vita had they gone ahead with their plans. Bad pub easily outweighs that sales bump, though.

HideoKojima · Apr 19, 2021

(Game Servers + maintenance cost) - (Estimated Revenue from game sales) = profit.

RedBlueGreen · Apr 19, 2021

zoogie said:
Closing all 3 down at once was a pretty crazy idea to begin with, not surprised they backed off a bit. I would assume they'll space out each closure at least a couple years now.

I wouldn't be surprised if they delayed it to discourage piracy. Especially with all the attention the CMOS battery issue has been getting. I don't know the accuracy of this, but I heard that it resulted in more efforts to crack the later slims and super slims.

And let's not forget a lot of European countries they do business in have pretty strict consumer protection and there would absolutely be lawsuits against Sony if people couldn't download or play their games (which will happen eventually because of the CMOS battery flaw), and the courts in these countries likely won't consider PSN's EULA to be more important than the consumer's actual rights. It's cheaper for them to keep the PS3 store up than to risk the several hundred thousand to millions lawsuits and fines will lose them.

Kraken_X · Apr 20, 2021

Shalashaska98 said:
(Game Servers + maintenance cost) - (Estimated Revenue from game sales) = profit.

This is the part that I don't get. Server cost is probably minimal since even the most powerful servers from 2007 can easily run in a VM, and they probably only need one FTE (or less) to maintain it. There could be a cost to pushing out firmware updates to the PS3 and Vita for newer encryption ciphers, but even then, 30% of global sales, even for a less popular system, almost certainly covers a system update every few years. They are already pushing updates to the PS3 to update Blu-Ray keys anyways.

Ericzander · Apr 20, 2021

Maybe it wasn't the best idea for Sony to announce they were shutting down the PS3 and Vita game stores while trying to sell digital only PS5s...

HideoKojima · Apr 20, 2021

Kraken_X said:
This is the part that I don't get. Server cost is probably minimal since even the most powerful servers from 2007 can easily run in a VM, and they probably only need one FTE (or less) to maintain it. There could be a cost to pushing out firmware updates to the PS3 and Vita for newer encryption ciphers, but even then, 30% of global sales, even for a less popular system, almost certainly covers a system update every few years. They are already pushing updates to the PS3 to update Blu-Ray keys anyways.

Well I'm not very knowledgeable but server cost include Power, staffing, having enough bandwidth, spare parts in case of failure, multiply all this by the number of locations they have will give you a big figure.

Tigran · Apr 20, 2021

lokomelo said:
Physical games do not work either when there is no connection to the server and the battery dies or is replaced, so I dont understand why you bragging about your physical media here...

Because him, like many others don't understand that the disc is just a license that can be revoked at almost any time anyways.

Crazystato · Apr 20, 2021

I'd buy more ps3 games if they had more sales. Some of those older games are way overpriced for what they are.

MaxToTheMax · Apr 20, 2021

I came when I read this

Goku1992A · Apr 20, 2021

This is a good thing for people that still own a PS3 and a PS Vita to keep it alive. So the question is online services will still be active on the PS3 and the Vita aswell?

Ethelmord · Apr 20, 2021

Either way I bet they made quite abit from that from people rushing to the stores to buy what they can before they closed.

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Goku1992A said:
This is a good thing for people that still own a PS3 and a PS Vita to keep it alive. So the question is online services will still be active on the PS3 and the Vita aswell?

Yeah the online services for each were never going to close, just the stores.

HarveyHouston · Apr 20, 2021

Huh, so the PS3 Store is still going to be open, then? That's great! I suppose that means we shouldn't have to download Rock Band content from elsewhere, or use a service to get stuff from Sony's servers.

I will probably be changing my Discord links, as I don't want people to pirate what is still being sold at a price on that platform. I deal with abandonware, not simply content you can get for free. This would mean that Rock Band DLC for the PS3 is not yet abandonware. Of course, I'm not going to share any of it here on GBAtemp, as I want to respect their "no-wares" rule.

CrossOut · Apr 20, 2021

To me this says that they had no plans or anything to let people play their old content on newer devices and after they saw the cmos battery thing they decided, yeah we fucked here lets not shut down the shops so easily. It is a good move on their part but i wonder what they will do in future? They will close the shops eventually but when? If they do close it again they really need a way to let you play your old content on the PS4 or PS5.

If anytihing this could mean Sony will follow in Microsofts footseps and decided to have more backward compatibility options as it is really needed on Sonys end at this point.

RedBlueGreen · Apr 20, 2021

CrossOut said:
They will close the shops eventually but when? If they do close it again they really need a way to let you play your old content on the PS4 or PS5

Which they absolutely won't do. They claimed the PS5 was gonna have strong backwards compatibility, but then they only supported PS4 and not even all titles. Modern Sony is full of crap and they always will be.

Codemastershock · Apr 20, 2021

DbGt said:
I mean if the stores continued to sell they would have not decided to close them down in the first place..... I dont think many people are using the stores anymore

If it was a completely organic decision based on usage, it wouldnt be so sudden to the point of Vita devs could still purchase dev kits and they were not warned beforehand. There is a rumor about a exploit on the legacy side of PS Store that Sony wasnt interested in fixing and I do believe on it strongly.

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JustJay said:
But Microsoft does it too, you can't buy Forza Horizon 3 on PC anymore unless someone's selling a key and they jack up the prices, and it's not cracked for latest Windows 10 update.

Racing games are very well known for being pulled from digital storefronts since they rely so much on licensed stuff, it is not a "Microsoft thing". Car manufacturers alone are kinda of an ass to deal with licensing classic cars, added to the fact that there is music licensing, random brands licensing (Lego, Hot Wheels or even Fallout and Final Fantasy XV)... It is well known that Forza titles are supported for 4 years and when the time of expiration gets close, you can buy all DLC with a discount. Other Microsoft titles you can still buy physically or digitally without any issues.

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