Suddenly, a number of beloved JRPGs are no longer available for digital purchase, as Bandai Namco has just delisted a big swath of Tales games from the PlayStation Store.
The PS3 and Vita stores have dropped access to a variety of Tales games in recent days. As spotted on Reddit, the EU store has dropped Tales of Hearts R, Tales of Graces f, and Tales of Zestiria, and the NA store has dropped Tales of Hearts R and Tales of Xillia 2. I've doubled-checked on the NA side, at least, and yeah - the only Tales games left are the Symphonia and Symphonia: Dawn of the New World remasters and the Graces f and Xillia double-pack. (For the old-gen, anyway; the PS4/PS5 library is more substantial with the likes of Zestiria, Berseria, and Arise.)
You can, of course, still get these games on physical discs - many of them quite readily - and if you're the type to be playing old JRPGs on a PS3 or Vita, you're probably used to paying the eBay tax by now. The more notable thing is that it seems all DLC has disappeared with these delistings, alongside the general reminder that you shouldn't expect digital stores to continue carrying all their games indefinitely.
It's unclear exactly when Bandai Namco took these games down - the Reddit post linked above is from just yesterday, but there was another post about one game missing from the digital store a few weeks ago - and there's no obvious reason for the delistings, either. I've reached out for further information and will update if I learn more. Tales games had been sporadically delisted from the EU PS3 store over the course of years, and it's the lack of consistency in these removals that's perhaps most frustrating.
The PS3 and Vita stores had been set to close altogether back in 2021, but Sony reversed course on that decision after a public backlash from fans. Nonetheless, Microsoft is going ahead with plans to shut down the Xbox 360 store on July 29, 2024, and with publishers casually pulling their games from these legacy platforms, the future of this particular generation is not looking bright.
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