Sony has announced the closure of its PlayStation Store on the PS3 and Vita, beginning next month in certain countries.
While the storefront will be shuttered, Sony has said it will “ease the transition” by allowing players to still download previously-purchased content after the following closure dates “for the foreseeable future.”
- Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua – PlayStation Store on PS3 will close starting August 2026.
- Additional Latin American and Middle Eastern countries – PlayStation Store on PS3 will close starting late 2026.
- In all other countries, PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita will close in July 2027.
Sony’s news lands today alongside the bombshell announcement that no new PlayStation 5 games will ship on discs from January 2028 onwards. From that date onwards, all new games will launch digitally via the PlayStation Store, with some still sold in boxes at retail that contain a digital download code (as will be the case later this year with GTA 6).
Explaining the upcoming closure of its PS3 and Vita stores, Sony said it wanted to “expand the PlayStation experience on newer devices that most of our users are playing on today,” which required it to “focus more resources on delivering the best gaming experiences on these platforms,” such as PS5.
“We know this news may be disappointing to PS3 and PS Vita players who hold a special place in their hearts for this generation of gaming,” wrote PlayStation exec Sid Shuman. “PS3 and PS Vita represent an important era in our PlayStation history, so this was not an easy decision for us to make.”
A successor to the earlier PSP, Sony’s PlayStation Vita originally launched in December 2011 as a rival to Nintendo’s dualscreen DS. Alas, its attempt at bringing the PS3’s blockbuster franchises to its smaller screen never really took off, while its memory card format proved an expensive hurdle. Sony has never provided an exact sales figure for the hardware, but it is estimated the handheld shifted around 10-15 million units during its lifespan, around 10% of the Nintendo DS.
Launched in 2006, the PS3 also initially faced sales struggles amid complaints over its price and form factor, and fierce competition from Microsoft’s Xbox 360. It went on to sell 87.4 million consoles, around half the amount sold by PS2.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
