Sony has announced it’s reversing its prior decision to sunset the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita stores later this year. Those stores will remain online for the time being.
The news comes by way of a blog post from Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan. In an unusually apologetic statement, Ryan wrote “upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here.”
When Sony announced it would be taking these legacy stores offline, it drew public outcry from people concerned with game preservation and from players who simply wanted an option to revisit classic games in the future.
The original announcement led many to question the value a corporate entity like Sony placed in its large and culturally-significant backlog of older games.
“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,” he continued.
“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.”
Sony’s about-face will not include support for the PSP store however. That platform will shut down as planned on July 2nd, 2021.