If I Buy a Game From the Playstatin Store Can I Download It Again
Sony has made it near impossible to buy PS3 games online
Update: Nintendo plans to shut downwardly the 3DS and Wii U eShops in 2023, leading to another video game preservation calamity
If you've already played everything you lot want to play on the PS3, consider yourself lucky. Sony'south system from two console generations agone still has an excellent game library. But you'd never know it, considering how many hoops y'all have to jump through earlier you tin can access it. Afterward letting my PS3 gather dust for the last few years, I decided information technology was time to give the console another spin. Subsequently an hour of grappling with — and barely defeating — the primitive interface and arcane restrictions, I nearly wish I hadn't.
There are still lots of worthwhile games to purchase on PS3. And if you can't observe them in a used games store or on eBay, buying them digitally is however technically an option. Only if you go downwards that path, y'all should exist prepared for a lot of frustration forth the way.
A stay of execution
Longtime Tom's Guide readers may call up that there was a large to-do almost the PS3's online store last year. Sony threatened to close the whole thing down, because the company wanted to focus more attention on selling PS4 and PS5 games. Later a month of fan backfire, Sony agreed to keep operations for the PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita, although the PSP's online store was (mostly) doomed.
The but issue is that these deprecated console stores required some compromises to proceed afloat. Unlike the PS4 and PS5, buying games on the PS3 has a number of inconvenient restrictions:
- Y'all must buy games via the console itself, not a Web browser
- You must preload the funds you need into your business relationship
- You can download a game simply from its shop list, not via a Web browser or app
These may not sound like huge inconveniences. In fact, if the PlayStation Store worked perfectly on the PS3, they wouldn't be. But each step of the procedure compounds on itself to create a vortex of unpleasantness, dragging out a v-minute procedure into an hours-long odyssey.
The setup for my story is elementary. I have nothing pressing to play at the moment, and I've been slowly but surely working my way through the excellent Yakuza series. While nigh of these games are bachelor on modern consoles, the questionable spinoff, Yakuza: Dead Souls, is relegated to the PS3. Information technology's not supposed to exist a great game, simply I'grand invested plenty in the franchise to see what information technology has to offer. As concrete copies of the game become for upwards of $80 on eBay, the $twenty digital copy looked much more tempting.
Don't demand no credit card
In retrospect, I should take foreseen that this would be a hard process when I booted up my PS3 and found that the PlayStation Store refused to load. This, I discovered, was due to my system'south clock being prepare to the wrong time, as the PS3 does not automatically adjust for Daylight Savings. This was too the easiest part of the process to right, requiring only one trip through an obscure series of menus.
Side by side, I had to find the game in the PS Shop. Different the PS4, PS5 and Web stores, the PS3 uses an antiquated system that forces yous to select one letter at a time, rather than simply typing out a game's proper name on a keyboard. This is most equally tedious as it sounds.
Subsequently adding the game to my cart, I attempted to check out. When you get-go log into the PS3's store, a observe reminds yous that credit cards and PayPal don't work, and that you'll take to add funds via either smartphone or PC. Since I had advance warning, I couldn't be likewise upset most this, but it's nonetheless an actress complication in an already complicated process.
I hopped onto my smartphone and logged into the PlayStation Store. Adding funds is not the most straightforward procedure to begin with, since the link that the PS3 store gives you doesn't really take you to the "add funds" page — information technology's just a two-step tutorial on how to do and so. The actual option to add together funds is cached in your business relationship profile under Payment Direction.
Calculation funds is not a straightforward procedure, either. Yous tin can't just toll out the game you want to purchase and blazon in the exact price. Instead, you lot have to add funds in increments of $5, $10, $25, $fifty or $60. If your game costs, say, $21, as mine did, y'all'll have to live with iv useless dollars bottleneck upwardly your PSN account until y'all purchase even more stuff. Information technology's an erstwhile, inexpensive trick to lock y'all into a digital ecosystem.
Fifty-fifty less straightforward were the inexplicable error messages I got when I tried to actually add funds. My credit menu had an fault; my PayPal had an mistake. I checked to make sure that Sony servers were running properly, just everything was in social club. I decided that, perhaps, my PC would be a better pick. But after logging in and attempting to add funds via both credit carte du jour and PayPal once more, I got the exact same message: "An mistake has occurred. Please attempt over again."
At this signal, my just recourse was to become online and see if other people had the aforementioned problem. I had 2 options: I could purchase a PSN gift bill of fare and hope for the best, or I could endeavor to add together funds on a PS4 or PS5. Wanting to cutting out the middleman, I booted upward my PS5 and hopped into the PlayStation Shop.
Except, as I discovered, y'all tin can't add funds in the PlayStation Store — you have to swoop deep into your account menu from the PS5's home screen. It'southward an unintuitive process from start to finish, but at least it (somewhat inexplicably) worked. At last, I had $25 in my PSN wallet.
That was the end of my payment difficulties, only a few more than hurdles withal stood between Yakuza: Dead Souls and me. After I finally bought the game, I selected the Download option, only to be informed that I didn't have enough space — 20 GB, to be precise.
This part was, perhaps, understandable. I've had the PS3 for more than than a decade, and had never really culled my game library. I took a few minutes to uninstall all of my digital games, securing 21 GB of complimentary space overall. I went back to the PS Store, where I learned that my 21 GB of complimentary space wasn't enough to install a xx GB game.
This necessitated another trip to the Net aid forums. It turns out that every PlayStation game requires twice as much space to install (or to update) as it actually needs to run, due to redundancies in the installation procedure. In actuality, I needed 40 GB of space to install a 20 GB game, on a organization with 80 GB of total storage space. The PS3's online shop never explains this part of the process, leaving you to estimate how much space you'll actually demand to free up.
At this point, I had to navigate into the PS3'due south Game Data Utility menu, which had big installation files from every PS3 game I'd e'er played. I had to delete all this data — merely it was admittedly vital that I did not bear upon the Saved Data Utility menu, located directly next to Game Information Utility, as this would have deleted all of my relieve files instead. Some of the installation data became corrupted while I was attempting to delete it, which necessitated a full console reboot.
At last, more than than an hour after I kickoff attempted to buy the game, I could begin the process of downloading Yakuza: Dead Souls onto my PS3. Due to the panel's antiquated Wi-Fi connection, the process would take near four hours. I turned off my system and went to bed.
Game preservation
When Sony first announced the PS3 store shutdown, I argued that such practices were counterproductive for game preservation. Without rehashing my whole argument, older games are already difficult to play, and removing them from digital stores makes it that much harder. While information technology's admirable that we tin can however buy and download PS3 games, the process is so convoluted that I tin't imagine many people would want to.
To be off-white, Sony has only so many resources, and information technology makes more sense to funnel those resource toward systems that people are really using on a twenty-four hour period-to-twenty-four hours basis. Even in its current, deprecated form, the PS3 store does have time, effort and money to maintain. Information technology would require even more fourth dimension, money and attempt to brand the feel meaningfully ameliorate.
And even so, people are nevertheless ownership and playing old games, if the outcry against the PS3/Vita/PSP shop closures was annihilation to get by. If manufacturers can't commit any resource into making this procedure meliorate, so at the very least, they should endeavor to ensure that it doesn't get worse.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/buy-ps3-games-online
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