Revamped PS Store?

Whether this story is true or not, I don't know. Sites such as The Verge talked about it with their source being a French Vita site. Sony is supposedly revamping their PlayStation Store on both the website itself and its mobile app. Come the 19th this month of October for the web and the 28th for the mobile app, things will look different. The big thing being the inability to buy PSP, PS3, and PS Vita games (their libraries and other ones like PS1 classics) from the web and mobile. You have to go through their stores on the actual systems to buy them.

If true, this was coming. I'm not enthused about it, but look at the Wii. That came out the same time as the PS3, and Nintendo shut down the Wii Shop in January last year. I can see Microsoft doing something like this in a year or two with the 360 and shut it down. Online, there is somewhat of a panic on forums. Some thinking it's all shut down. No, not yet. My biggest gripe with the PS3 store is that it is a bitch to scroll. Not so much the searching, but the bad frame rate. I'm not kidding. It can be slow as molasses.

The inability to buy PSP games is a bummer, but not a shock. It was discontinued about six years ago and the store was shut down in early 2016. There are still a lot of games physically for it, though. Only a matter of what digital games were exclusive and which ones made it to PS3. I don't know when PS3 will shut down entirely, but probably another year or two. It's hard to guess with these types of systems because some still game on it and the 360. Some say you can't find the titles on the scrolling menu. Not true. I was told about using the search feature and those ones not on the list came up when manually typing the title names.

I can't comment on the Vita since I've never played one. Never wanted one when it was brand new in 2012. More interested in playing Xbox 360 at that time and my family got a PS3 that Christmas. I'm assuming it has a similar situation to the PS3. Now, welcome to the future. In ten years time, we could see it not be able to download and purchase Vita games, PS1, and PSP games. It's inevitable. Same with the Wii U, 3DS, Switch, Xbox One, and any future consoles.

I can see homebrew coming in at some point. There will be a way. Also, gaming emulation still has its rough patches to deal with despite plenty of work being done for the last 15 years of gaming. PS3 has shown various progress. The Wii U and 3DS have their own emulators. PSP does. It's a matter of getting the thousands upon thousands of games to function and to preserve any of the digital only releases. Where will gaming take us in this decade? I don't know. But the preservation and attempt to keep interests in these systems alive will keep providing a legacy in what they offered. Get what you can from PS stores if you think this story is true, mainly PSP owners.