Really, it’s a wider question about how we preserve game history. Sony should be dragged for that - but this isn’t just about them. Sony and its executive leadership have showcased a pretty piss poor attitude towards old games and backwards compatibility recently, with PlayStation boss Jim Ryan famously asking “why would anybody play this?” about some of his own stone-cold classics. What’ll happen to those purchases if that happens?Ĭlearly this isn’t just a Sony problem, then. Google has a penchant for cutting losses and shutting down things that don’t work out, and we all know Stadia has struggled. I also look at new services like Stadia, too, and wonder. Nintendo will also tomorrow yank ‘limited release’ Mario and Fire Emblem games from sale for, well, no good reason at all.
#DRAKENGARD 3 DLC SONY DOWNLOAD#
But Nintendo has already closed the Wii and DSi download stores, wiping with it a huge number of smaller, independent games. Microsoft has fared best so far - the worst they’ve done is shut down the original Xbox Live servers. There’s been a lot of crowing on social media by fans of consoles not created by Sony since the announcement came in, but let’s not act like this is a Sony-exclusive decision. The final body count must be enormous and brutal.
The guys at RPG Site compiled a list of all PS role-playing games about to be unceremoniously discontinued and for that genre alone it’s well over one hundred titles. The list of PS-exclusive titles about to be no longer available new thanks to this shutdown is presumably enormous. The shut-downs have now reached generations of consoles where download-exclusive games or contents weren’t just occasional - they’d become the norm. That’s why as the digital shutdowns spread up the console generations, they feel even more apocalyptic for preserving video gaming history. This goes for much DLC, too you can buy a disc copy of a discontinued game if it’s available, but you’ll never be able to get any online-sold add-ons. The existing copies can’t be sold or traded, so there is no second-hand market - these games just become impossible to buy. How many smaller-scale, lower cost games and DLC items were sold exclusively through the PlayStation Store? Once Sony Thanos-snaps these stores out of existence, these games quite literally disappear.
#DRAKENGARD 3 DLC SONY PS3#
Worse, though, is the digital legacy of the PS3 and 360 - a console generation when indie games found new ways to reach more players.
This, I suppose, is no different from how physical production of a generation’s games would eventually come to a close - but it still stings. The only option for these games will be to pick up discs, which will now soar in value on the second-hand market. If you’re about to jump into Nier Replicant’s remaster and want to experience Drakengard 3, which shares a universe with it, this is the only way it can currently be purchased. Some others will be impossible for those who don’t already own them to experience.Īlmost the whole Motorstorm franchise, a much-loved but now defunct Sony racer, only remained available new via the PS Store, for instance. There’s a significant number of PS3 and Vita games in particular that will be difficult for new users to purchase and play once these stores close in a few weeks. This is why this closure stings more than others in the past, though. That broken, unpatched launch version of Cyberpunk, for instance, is a relic that deserves to survive for the sake of history if nothing else - and thanks to the earliest disc prints, it will. Even if you exclusively buy physical games, we’re all downloading updates and DLC. But perhaps when I wrote that we were already on a slippery slope, with too many purchases shackled to online services that can be closed down on a whim. When Google Stadia was announced, I said that streaming could be the future of games but gave me grave worries for game preservation. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. But our digital archives need to get better to help facilitate that. The eventual future is probably all-digital, and I accept that.
We can't go on producing all this plastic for the sake of our hobby, either. But this is the digital future, and the gradual march of progress. There’s a lot of anger about this decision, and justifiably so.
#DRAKENGARD 3 DLC SONY PSP#
But Sony’s announcement that it’s to close the PS3, Vita and PSP stores for good is without doubt the most devastating yet. We’ve seen digital store shutdowns before.
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