https://www.thegamer.com/ps3-vita-ps...nently-closed/
Not long after the Japan Studio thing we get "well this fucking sucks" deja'vu. Its not confirmed yet but given the removal of the PS3/P/Vita store access online already this doesn't seem that unlikely and a lot of reliable news/industry people are treating it like its legit. The questions of course are 1:will we still be able to redownload purchases? and 2:what does this mean in terms of games preservation?
On one hand you have the idea of things you may have bought as recently as this year on the Vita just going away forever, thanks for the money sucker, start counting the years till your PS4 purchases are all gone too!. But this would set a bad precedent and be extremely bad press for a company trying to push their first all digital console so i doubt it but its still a minor worry just in case.
The real issue here is the games we lose. Many PS3 games never hit other hardware including sonys own and some never had a physical release at all. Those that did are no doubt going to get scalped to high heaven should this occur. So enjoy having to pay $100+ for Tokyo Jungle a year from now instead of 5 bucks for example. Considering this includes all the dlc games will forever be locked out of on those platforms this could see a staggering loss of content on a degree we have always expected to happen one day as more and more digital only content was produced but hoped wouldn't occur.
Then theres the experience issue. I love games like Suikoden, Vagrant Story and Front Mission 3. Right now you can buy those in the PSN Ps1 classics section for a few quid and experience some of the best games ever made. If that goes away what do you tell younger people who dont know or want to resort to piracy and emulation? go on ebay and hope that 300 dollar copy is legit?
no doubt the usual short sighted consoomer crowd will go "who cares those games are over 6 years old and thats ancient you had your chance to play them lmao" as they always do till something they give a real shit about goes away but in terms of videogame preservation and just simply the ease of playing older top tier games affordably and legitimately that could be a thing of the past in a few months and that really sucks.