Can I Download My Ps3 Games Again
Sony has made it nearly impossible to purchase PS3 games online
Update: Nintendo plans to close downwards the 3DS and Wii U eShops in 2023, leading to another video game preservation cataclysm
If yous've already played everything you want to play on the PS3, consider yourself lucky. Sony'southward system from two console generations ago nevertheless has an excellent game library. But you'd never know it, considering how many hoops you have to spring through before you lot tin admission it. After letting my PS3 gather grit for the last few years, I decided it was time to requite the panel some other spin. Afterwards an 60 minutes of grappling with — and barely defeating — the archaic interface and arcane restrictions, I almost wish I hadn't.
There are still lots of worthwhile games to buy on PS3. And if y'all can't notice them in a used games shop or on eBay, buying them digitally is still technically an option. Simply if you go downwardly that path, you should be prepared for a lot of frustration along the style.
A stay of execution
Longtime Tom'due south Guide readers may remember that there was a big to-do nearly the PS3'due south online store final year. Sony threatened to shut the whole affair down, because the company wanted to focus more attention on selling PS4 and PS5 games. Afterward a month of fan backlash, Sony agreed to continue operations for the PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita, although the PSP'due south online shop was (generally) doomed.
The simply upshot is that these deprecated console stores required some compromises to keep afloat. Different the PS4 and PS5, ownership games on the PS3 has a number of inconvenient restrictions:
- You must buy games via the console itself, non a Web browser
- Yous must preload the funds y'all need into your business relationship
- You tin download a game only from its store listing, non via a Web browser or app
These may not sound similar huge inconveniences. In fact, if the PlayStation Store worked perfectly on the PS3, they wouldn't be. Only each step of the procedure compounds on itself to create a vortex of unpleasantness, dragging out a five-minute process into an hours-long odyssey.
The setup for my story is simple. I have aught pressing to play at the moment, and I've been slowly only surely working my style through the fantabulous Yakuza serial. While most of these games are available on mod consoles, the questionable spinoff, Yakuza: Expressionless Souls, is relegated to the PS3. It's not supposed to be a cracking game, but I'm invested enough in the franchise to see what it has to offering. Equally physical copies of the game become for upwards of $80 on eBay, the $twenty digital copy looked much more tempting.
Don't need no credit carte
In retrospect, I should take foreseen that this would be a difficult process when I booted up my PS3 and found that the PlayStation Store refused to load. This, I discovered, was due to my system's clock being gear up to the wrong time, equally the PS3 does not automatically suit for Daylight Savings. This was also the easiest part of the procedure to correct, requiring only i trip through an obscure serial of menus.
Next, I had to find the game in the PS Store. Unlike the PS4, PS5 and Web stores, the PS3 uses an antiquated organisation that forces you lot to select ane letter of the alphabet at a time, rather than merely typing out a game'due south name on a keyboard. This is near as tedious as it sounds.
Afterward adding the game to my cart, I attempted to check out. When y'all first log into the PS3'southward shop, a notice reminds yous that credit cards and PayPal don't work, and that you lot'll have to add funds via either smartphone or PC. Since I had advance warning, I couldn't be too upset most this, only it's notwithstanding an extra complication in an already complicated procedure.
I hopped onto my smartphone and logged into the PlayStation Shop. Adding funds is not the near straightforward process to brainstorm with, since the link that the PS3 store gives yous doesn't actually have you to the "add funds" page — it's just a 2-step tutorial on how to do then. The actual option to add funds is buried in your account contour nether Payment Management.
Calculation funds is not a straightforward process, either. Yous can't simply price out the game y'all desire to buy and type in the exact cost. Instead, you lot take to add funds in increments of $5, $10, $25, $50 or $threescore. If your game costs, say, $21, as mine did, you'll have to live with iv useless dollars clogging up your PSN business relationship until y'all buy even more stuff. It's an old, inexpensive trick to lock y'all into a digital ecosystem.
Even less straightforward were the inexplicable error messages I got when I tried to actually add funds. My credit menu had an error; my PayPal had an error. I checked to make sure that Sony servers were running properly, simply everything was in order. I decided that, peradventure, my PC would be a better choice. But later logging in and attempting to add together funds via both credit carte and PayPal over again, I got the exact same message: "An error has occurred. Please attempt again."
At this point, my only recourse was to go online and meet if other people had the same problem. I had two options: I could purchase a PSN gift carte du jour and promise for the best, or I could attempt to add funds on a PS4 or PS5. Wanting to cutting out the middleman, I booted up my PS5 and hopped into the PlayStation Store.
Except, as I discovered, you can't add together funds in the PlayStation Store — you have to swoop deep into your account menu from the PS5's abode screen. It's an unintuitive procedure from kickoff to finish, but at least information technology (somewhat inexplicably) worked. At last, I had $25 in my PSN wallet.
That was the end of my payment difficulties, but a few more than hurdles even so 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 infinite — 20 GB, to exist precise.
This part was, peradventure, understandable. I've had the PS3 for more than than a decade, and had never actually culled my game library. I took a few minutes to uninstall all of my digital games, securing 21 GB of gratis space overall. I went back to the PS Shop, where I learned that my 21 GB of free space wasn't enough to install a twenty GB game.
This necessitated another trip to the Internet assist forums. It turns out that every PlayStation game requires twice as much infinite to install (or to update) as it actually needs to run, due to redundancies in the installation process. In authenticity, I needed 40 GB of space to install a xx GB game, on a system with 80 GB of full storage infinite. The PS3'southward online store never explains this part of the procedure, leaving yous to guess how much infinite you lot'll actually need to complimentary upwards.
At this bespeak, I had to navigate into the PS3'southward Game Data Utility menu, which had large installation files from every PS3 game I'd e'er played. I had to delete all this data — but it was absolutely vital that I did not touch the Saved Data Utility bill of fare, located direct adjacent to Game Data Utility, as this would have deleted all of my save files instead. Some of the installation data became corrupted while I was attempting to delete it, which necessitated a full panel reboot.
At last, more than than an hour later on I kickoff attempted to buy the game, I could begin the procedure of downloading Yakuza: Dead Souls onto my PS3. Due to the console's antiquated Wi-Fi connexion, the procedure would take virtually 4 hours. I turned off my system and went to bed.
Game preservation
When Sony commencement 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 information technology that much harder. While it'southward beauteous that we tin still purchase and download PS3 games, the procedure is so convoluted that I can't imagine many people would want to.
To be off-white, Sony has only and then many resources, and it makes more than sense to funnel those resources toward systems that people are really using on a day-to-day basis. Even in its current, deprecated form, the PS3 store does take fourth dimension, effort and coin to maintain. It would require fifty-fifty more time, money and effort to make the feel meaningfully better.
And even so, people are still ownership and playing erstwhile games, if the outcry against the PS3/Vita/PSP store closures was anything to get by. If manufacturers can't commit any resources into making this procedure better, and then at the very least, they should endeavor to ensure that it doesn't get worse.
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Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/buy-ps3-games-online
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