Four years ago, Sony announced that the PSP, PS3, and PS Vita stores would be taken down, which in turn would leave a huge number of games locked to the platforms unavailable. After massive backlash the PS3 and PS Vita were spared, and we haven't heard a peep since. However, the PS3 store has been down for over a day now, and people are starting to worry that Sony may have killed it without any warning, sending the only way to play Metal Gear Solid 4 and Tokyo Jungle into the great beyond.
As pointed out by Delisted Games ,since Tuesday night EDT, the PlayStation Store on PS3 – which is the only way to access this version, as the browser client was discontinued – has been throwing out the message "this service is currently undergoing maintenance" when you try to open up a game page on the store. They report that this is the case on the US, European, and Japanese PS3 stores but the PS Vita store is unaffected. It's also reported that players are still able to access the games they already own for download.
Naturally, since Sony tried to take the store down years ago, some are worried that this is the end, and that instead of potentially incurring more backlash Sony has just quietly pulled the plug. This would be especially concerning as the only way to officially grab a number of all-time classics like Metal Gear Solid 4, God Hand, and Tokyo Jungle currently, is on the PS3.
"No, please. Don't do this to my precious baby, Sony," one writes. "I think I have pretty much everything I'd want from the PS3 store, but it'd be sad to suddenly end like this nonetheless."
"I mean, if they just shut it down and don't announce it, unfortunately there would be basically no backlash," one suggests. "If I'm being very honest I'm surprised no one does this lol."
The PS4 and PS5 weren't made to be backwards compatible with the classic consoles, mainly due to its notoriously weird architecture, so the only way to play PS3 games without the actual console is via game streaming.
However, I personally doubt Sony would unceremoniously kill the PS3 store like this, especially when the Vita is totally fine. I can't imagine the company is planning on supporting it too much longer (and this event may speed this up) but the chances are there's no dedicated team keeping an eye on this constantly, and it'll likely be live again in the near future. At least, I hope so as one of the 20 people with a PS3 still hooked up.
You'll want to check out our list of The 25 best PS3 games of all time to see what you should pick up before Sony eventually kills the store for good.
