Sony will be shutting down the PlayStation Portable ’s ability to access the PlayStation Store directly very soon. The native storefront will cease availability on March 31, according to the PSP’s support page on the Sony website.
In order to purchase content for the PSP, owners will now have to go online to the PlayStation Store’s website. Previous purchases will remain accessible via the PSP downloads list. In-game purchases will continue to be supported as well.
Over the weekend, Sony announced that it would no longer be shipping the PlayStation TV microconsole in Japan. Shipments of the PlayStation TV ended in Europe and North America at the end of 2015, according to a Sony representative. They are still available for purchase at Best Buy and Amazon , among other retailers, at a significant price drop from the suggested retail price of $79.99.
Ultimately, even Sony didn’t stand behind the PlayStation TV, with top Sony exec Shuhei Yoshida stating:
“It can do many things, but it's not easy to say this one thing is extremely good. I think that's the reason we were not able to convince people at the original price.”
Sony has also killed almost all first-party development for the PlayStation Vita. In October, an executive in Sony’s Japanese branch stated that there were no games currently in production. Sony has previously stated that the PS Vita isn’t dead, but simply more of an indie console now.
The news that development of new first-party titles is so limited makes it hard to see the PS Vita as anything but a relic, though a few holdouts continue to express their appreciation for “ that more specialist device and a more specialist experience.”
"The expectation of the graphical quality and size of the world for these type of games have risen after the launch of PlayStation 4. The same thing happened with the PSP. People were so excited to be able to play PS2 graphics games on the go. After PS3 launched, expectations grew. The types of games on PSP were not as attractive,” Yoshida said in a bid to explain the consoles’ struggle to find wide success.
