PS3, PS Vita Stores Will Not Be Closing As Sony Backtracks On Controversial Decision

@laurenriley3332: Sony's net worth is in the ballpark of $100 billion dollars I think they'll manage just fine...

@laurenriley3332: I game on all platform but always a playstation fan and I 100% agree with you.

@just1mohr: Yet you fail to realize that Sony has millions of dollars, they can afford it besides it's not like your digital PS5 is all that special, not much to play on that system considered most of what is there is multiplat. News flash; you don't own your digital games, you just have a license that has no displayable timeframe on it so think about that next time you buy something digitally console or otherwise and not physically.

@nintendians: if 15-20 a minor chance my cmos goes bad, I guess I'll have to purchase another ps5 if I want to keep playing on that platform.

@xgalacticax: I guess they have since this issue is unheard of

@Crazy_sahara: I see Mister Bigsby has begun his day with his customary peanut butter and crack sandwich

@ecurl143: Yea OK, just because you played a game already or listened to a song or watched a movie, means that nobody else can experience it!

Dude, have you seen the digital Indie store nowadays? They are filling up fast with games that ALL of the people within my circles could care less about mostly. Every now & then we get a winner, but they are slim pickings & I have found myself going back to the older games now & playing them instead.

@ecurl143: it's for playing porn off of data discs

@ecurl143: Well, good for you? I guess people like playing their old games much like people still like watching silent films, listening to Led Zeppelin, Reading The Hobbit and playing chess. Because...oh I don't know, they love them? 4k blu ray and streaming is now the latest thing yet new movies continue to be released on DVD. Phonographs are now very high end for vinyl enthusiasts, which back in 1984 the experts said CD would kill off.

So yeah. Something along those lines

@ecurl143: I would agree with you, IF (a huge IF) new games were as good in quality and memorability as old games; not in terms of graphics, that's obvious, but everything else. When I was 8, I went from SEGA Genesis to the PS1, and that was mindblowing; there were so many great games (that I still play today), that I didn't care for the Genesis for years. Then went to the PS2, and didn't care about the PS1 for years. That pattern continued until I reached the PS4, which didn't have a single game of my interest for five whole years until 2018 came about and brought Spider-Man (God Of War was good, but not as good as the first two). But it wasn't until 2019 that it became mandatory to own the console, with DMC5, and a year after that with FF7 remake.

There just isn't many more great single player games. Accessibility and mobile gaming have made multiplayer/battle-royale games a trend that will probably never die.

So yes, I have the PS2 (which also counts as a PS1), PS3 and PS4 hooked to my TV, and still play all of them. I wish I could have a single system for everything, but backwards compatibility is also partially gone, thanks to remasters and remakes. That's what sad, if you ask me.

@Gaming-Planet: that's issue is unheard of.

@Spartan_418: One major problem with this is that Sony makes their money by taking a cut of game sales. By selling on a platform they don't own, not only do they lose that money but they have to pay a 30% fee to Apple and Google on top of that.

@doomsdayhell01: your kinda missing the point, is it mobile?

@Oldgun: Yes this is good news that they are bringing the stores back, but is Sony going to be offering discounted sales on PS3 titles at the PS3 store like Microsoft does with Xbox 360 titles on a weekly and seasonal basis?

@Thanatos2k: Fun fact: maintaining legacy systems costs substantially more than modern systems.

As someone who actually ran a business, hiring a single dude, making minimum wage, manning the desk for the odd time someone might make a sale or two, cost me $50k a year.

Now imagine, instead of a single dude at a desk, it's a series of data centers around the world. It's not a big data center, just a small partition off the side for legacy systems, being maintained by just enough people to keep things going. These guys aren't making minimum wage. Not even close. And you need at least a few guys: a software guy, a hardware guy, and a security specialist. And you need three of each for every system. They're probably making at least $50k. That's three, so you've got nine guys. And you likely have to pay a "legacy" bonus. We'll just say $500k for the team. And you probably got a data center for every continent, so that's six of these teams. There's $3 million right there.

Now let's talk the non-employee costs. According to a website I found, it costs $10 to 25 million a year to maintain a large data center. Let's say it's $10mil. And let's say only a fraction of that actually goes towards legacy systems. Let's get really conservative and say it's just 10%, or $1 million. There are six of these, so that's $6 million at a total of $9 million a year.

Now I think I saw something once that suggested Sony only makes like $1 or $2 million dollars a year on their legacy systems. Let's kick it up and say they make $2 million a year PER PLATFORM. That's $6 million dollars.

Final result, utilizing ultra conservative numbers, and liberal sales numbers: a loss of $3 million a year.

Can you see why they want to close the stores, now?

This is why making the emulators available is their best bet: it doesn't cost them anything besides making them available. We get to emulate games we already own and they don't have to keep selling them.

@Thanatos2k: First off - going to disagree with you on this one. You use the word "passive", where as I very distinctly have the impression that every legacy thing you have going is costly upkeep, keeping a plate spinning in the air if you will. Would be interesting to hear them do a really honest in depth interview on it, id be super stoked to hear that.

But yeah, obviously if they made enough money verses upkeep then yes, a business would most likely keep the store up - dont think thats a hot take - so logically Id have to actually believe they don't make enough to be worth keeping it up as they were shutting it down. Would lead me to believe they don't make much money from it.
Especially on the PS3 side - I wouldn't be surprised if there were a ton of titles selling ZERO copies.

Secondly - if you pay attention to podcasts and interviews and whats happened in the past -- there are many reasons besides $$ that they've talked about on why you'd want to stop supporting these legacy stores/platforms -- namely upkeep.
New games hit the Vita store - -that means Sony is required to keep making sure these games dont break things and work. It might mean releasing further patches and updates (which is very costly) and they want to be done with these systems. I do believe they literally announced a "final patch" for ps3?
It means keeping up multiplayer servers barely anyone uses. (And Sony rents server space unlike Microsoft).
It means paying staff to handle contracts, payments, I'm sure weird licensee deputes as older games need to be pulled from the store etc...
It means they have to keep going in to fix things when developers or customers say they are having issues buying something, or a trailer messes up. For example Little Big Planets servers were taken down in a hacker attack like 2 weeks ago, and I think they are still down? Because Sony doesn't care about a 15 year old game enough too devote resources in fixing it. Why would they?

None of that seems passive like you say. And if you were the business, why would you keep them up? Only if fans really made a stink and you didn't want to upset them. Which is what happened. They misjudged peoples attachment to legacy stuff. (Hope they got the message! Xbox too - only 16% of Xbox/360 games are BC and they haven't added a game to the program since 2019; Im not sure why people give MS a gold star and act like they have all their catalog backwards compatible, PSNow has just as many games available; its a weird narrative that Xbox dominates... Ive been burned on like half the 360 games Ive bought because I buy without checking the list... my fault. But yeah both companies really need to do better, especially fro ma preservationist standpoint. i think we will see that from 3rd parties years down the road... gotsidetracked). Support of legacy consoles can be tricky, time consuming, and very unprofitable.

These problems keep haunting you on an old dead system as long as that store is open.

I'm also throwing out a hypothetical here - the article hints at what I was thinking all along: "dedicating resources to newer project." I have a feeling that legacy game support is Sony's answer to Gamepass. Its not that they didn't care like the rabid anti-Sony base has been screaming these past weeks. I think they know what they have access too, see that the games dont sell a hill of beans on Vita and PS3, but are GOLD if they get them onto a better version on PSNow. i 100% think thats what this means. But again, neither you or I are Sony corporate. Only time will tell if that prediction is true.

On top of that we know from history that the old architecture is still tied to the new architecture -- and again - it can mess things up. The article literally says "challenges of supporting an old commerce platform". Its not easy. We saw this with friends lists. We saw this with user name changes, etc... Its easy to say "just leave it up, this really really small minority still like to buy things occasionally". But you aren't the programmer that goes to do something on PS5 and finds your job is harder because of some legacy bullshit from the terrible online presence the PS3 had. Shutting the store down was just step one to closing the PS3 and Vita off from that ecosystem one would have to imagine.

Glad they are keeping it up though, I didn't panic buy any games on my PS3 myself, wont ever use the store again I dont think (hadn't bought a legacy game in 6 years).

Ironically they probably sold like 10,000% the amount of games they usually do out of the fear this whole thing created, and now that they leave it open due to really harsh criticism, the "fans" will go back to not buying the games again ha-ha. And they will be like "why the **** did we leave the store up? Why aren't all the whiners buying the games they yelled at us about?". It was funny seeing people be like "I better buy a copy of XXX game now!"; I'm like, "its been out 13-15 years, why hadn't you bought it yet?". That store is a shit show for finding the games you already own etc... Its terrible. I hated the PS3 store back when it was the "current store", but seeing the PS4 store/library feature and Steam just made me hate that old store 100 times more.

As I said, it could just be some weird management call; "we dont give a shit, take it down for no reason even though we make money off of it" like you are implying. But I'm betting its much more complex than that, and Id love to see a real in depth interview covering it (@Gamespot).