You have probably heard the news that Sony will be shutting down the physical stores for the PS3, Vita and PSP.

Now on the PS3 I mainly purchased physical media, but a lot of those games require instant updating before they will play. And some refuse unless a connection to check for updates is active.

On PSP I never purchased a single digital game, only ever owning physical discs for the few I owned. I had a chip modded PSP right from the beginning so have to admit the PSP store was never used.

But with Vita I never bought a physical game. All digital purchases and I still play some of them somethings.

So the big question is, if you own digital copies of games on any of these systems, when the stores close later this year you won't be able to buy any new games but will you still be able to download/update those that you already own?

I'm hoping it will be like Steam. Even when games get removed and their store pages varnish you can still download them via your library.

This highlights what we have been saying for years. With retro games we have librarys of their complete catalogues for historical archive and to now revisit and play. But what and how can we try to preserve games for newer systems that are heading further and further to bring digital only. In fact on the PS4 I own hundreds of games digitally, and only a handful on physical disc. In not so worried in this regard because of the PS5 being backwards compatible. Plus if Sony are only just retiring the PS3 store now, that system ended it's production 8 years ago, so not such an issue at the moment.
[Reply]