In April, Sony revealed that its PlayStation 3, Portable, and Vita digital stores will soon become inaccessible, as the PlayStation Store will shut down across these platforms later this summer. However, after much criticism from the community, the decision has now been rolled back, though not entirely.
In a new announcement, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and president Jim Ryan plainly said the company had originally "made the wrong decision". The PlayStation Store will continue to be available across the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita devices, however, the PlayStation Portable's digital store will close as previously planned on July 2.
Regarding how the company came to the original decision, Ryan said the following:
"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."
Sony's quick turnaround after vigorous community feedback is a similar move to what Microsoft pulled in January, where the company had to backpedal heavily on the Xbox Live Gold price doubling measures after facing a tremendous community backlash of its own.
"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," Ryan added regarding what had changed Sony's mind.
14 Comments - Add comment