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This Week in Games - Melty Love

Got an email from playstation today about the store closures, it's not as big a deal as people are making it out to be, you can still redownload anything you already bought from the download list, just can't buy anything new.

What about content you already own?
• You will still be able to download your owned PS3, PS Vita, and PSP content, including games and video content.
• You can download your owned content onto your PS3, PS Vita, or PSP by accessing the Download List on the respective device.
• If you have purchased a PS3/PS Vita cross-buy bundle and have only downloaded either the PS3 or PS Vita version, you will need to download the other version prior to the closure of PlayStation™Store on the relevant device.
• Video content that you own can be streamed on PS3, PS4 or PS5 through the My Videos app, or on mobile devices through the PlayStation™Video app.
• You will still be able to re-download and play game titles you have claimed through PlayStation®Plus as long as you remain a member of the service.

Sony's relationship with games of earlier eras, and with its own role and responsibility as curator and archivist of those eras, often seems distinctly ambivalent. Whenever the question of PlayStation's back catalogue comes up, it's not long before someone quotes Jim Ryan's comments from 2017, when he expressed disbelief at the idea that anyone would want to play the PS1 and PS2 versions of Gran Turismo. It may seem unfair to keep knocking the company with statements made by a single executive years ago, but the reason that these words still have currency is because Sony hasn't done anything, in word or deed, to refute the idea that Ryan's mindset is shared across the company's top levels.

As it pulls down the digital shutters on its legacy storefronts, though, Sony's tendency not to spend too much time looking backwards presents a problem of its own. It's hard to measure just how much software is going to disappear into the ether with this store closure -- hundreds of games for the PS3, PSP and Vita platforms will become very difficult for anyone other than devoted collectors to access, while hundreds of PlayStation Minis (digital-only titles originally launched for the PSP) and PSone Classics (digital versions of original PlayStation games) will no longer be available in any format.

In effect, the closure of these three stores will shut off regular consumers' access to a giant segment of gaming history -- many hundreds of games spanning the period from Sony's market entry in late 1994 through to the PS4 launch in 2013. That's an almost twenty-year period, one which included a host of cultural and creative landmarks for videogames, many of them on Sony's platforms.