Ever since Sony’s announcement to close the digital store fronts for the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita in July 2026, it looks like prices have been steadily rising. For example, 3D Dot Game Heroes has seen a recent spike, going from around $50 to over $100 since the announcement. Prices vary for loose and complete-in-box copies, but both trend upwards.
The above example is a smaller game from Atlus, which normally sees this kind of trend anyway with their physical releases. What about something less popular and something that wasn’t in such demand to begin with? Let’s look at Wet from Bethesda Softworks. A far less in demand game but is now suddenly seeing a sharp rise on the charts.
The same goes for Chronicles of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena, demand rising after the announcement, with a steady used market price before it.
However, other games are not really seeing any effect, such as bigger games or ones that have sold a lot of copies, games like Uncharted and Final Fantasy XIII. According to the announcement on the PlayStation Blog, stores could start closing as early as August 2026 in some regions.
“As the PlayStation Store continues to evolve to support modern commerce systems, including updated payment processing standards, PS3 and PS Vita are no longer able to support these updates at the level required. As a result, we will need to close PlayStation Store on these devices in the timeframes as follows:
- Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua – PlayStation Store on PS3 will close starting August 2026.
- Additional Latin American and Middle Eastern countries – PlayStation Store on PS3 will close starting late 2026.
- In all other countries, PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita will close in July 2027.”
Of note, Sony has already tried to close the PS3 and PS Vita stores in the past, but backpedaled on the decision after public outcry in early 2021. This announcement also comes on the heels that Sony will no longer be printing physical media, beginning in 2028. Sony does not appear to be backing out on either of these decisions as of now.
Nostalgia Gamer 