PlayStation Store Will Stop Offering Movies & TV Shows Later This Year
On the 30th of January, Sony shut down PlayStation Vue – the console’s TV subscription service – after five years in operation. Now, in another move that points to Sony slowly abandoning non-gaming services, the company has announced plans to end all movie & TV show offerings on the PlayStation Store.
PlayStation Store Ending Movie & TV Show Services
While PlayStation Vue may have shut down, PlayStation users can still currently purchase or rent both movies and TV shows through the PlayStation Store. This service, however, will now be coming to an end on the 31st of August. “We’ve seen tremendous growth from PlayStation fans using subscription-based and ad-based entertainment streaming services on our consoles,” writes Vanessa Lee, Head of Business at Sony, in a recent blog post; “With this shift in customer behaviour, we have decided to no longer offer movie and TV purchases and rentals through PlayStation Store.”
Users who have already purchased content through PlayStation Store will, of course, still be able to access that content. Existing purchases will remain available on the platform for on-demand playback. However, users will no longer be able to make new purchases. Sony’s decision doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. When the company announced that it would be shutting down PlayStation Vue, Sony Deputy President John Kodera stated that; “the highly competitive Pay TV industry, with expensive content and network deals, has been slower to change than we expected.”
Kodera went on to conclude that; “We have decided to remain focused on our gaming business”. With that goal, a gradual shuttering of PlayStation’s non-gaming entertainment offerings was always likely to occur at some stage. Now, PlayStation users now exactly when; the 31st of August, 2021. Sony’s core gaming business has enjoyed enormous success in the last couple of years, with PlayStation-exclusive titles dominating throughout 2020. Indeed, the studio looks set to sweep the upcoming BAFTA Game Awards, having earned a record-breaking number of nominations for The Last of Us Part 2.