PS3 and PS Vita digital stores to close

This felt like an inevitability, but it still stings nonetheless.

Starting in August 2026, the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita will be closed.

It starts with Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, followed by Additional Latin American and Middle Eastern countries in ‘Late 2026’, and then the rest of the world follows suit in July 2027.

Both the PS3 and PS Vita stores remain the only way of purchasing PSP games, too. The native PSP store shut in July 2021.

Sony’s third main home console launched in 2006, and following a rocky few years where the Japanese tech giant ceded market share to the Xbox 360, price cuts and exclusive games helped it end its term strongly.

A custom Cell Broadband Engine processor is believed to be one of the reasons why this generation of PlayStation has not been backwards compatible with its PS4 and PS5 successors.

Several exclusive racing games, such as Gran Turismo 5 and 6, plus the MotorStorm series, remain permanently on the PS3, thanks to this restriction and having not been remastered or re-released.

Digital-only PS3 exclusive racing driving games include GTI Club+: Rally Côte d’Azur, Gran Turismo HD Concept and Calling All Cars!.

According to Sony, “players will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date for the foreseeable future.”

However, Sony states this is only “to ease the transition.”

It’s not clear how this will be possible, currently, but presumably, access to the previously purchased list will be possible without the Store selling games.

The handheld Vita, meanwhile, was released in 2011 and didn’t find as much mainstream success. There was also a PlayStation TV spin-off device for use with a TV. A Vita-specific Ridge Racer game did hit these platforms, with several tracks and cars DLC only.

“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. PS3 and PS Vita represent an important era in our PlayStation history, so this was not an easy decision for us to make,” continued the statement.

As we continue to expand the PlayStation experience on newer devices that most of our users are playing on today, we need to focus more resources on delivering the best gaming experiences on these platforms as we look ahead towards the future.