PlayStation Store to Stop Offering TV and Movie Content for Purchase or Rental

Sony has always strived to make the PlayStation portal a complete hub of entertainment. As a result, the PlayStation Store had movies, shows, and other similar content available for rental or for purchase. Moreover, the console also offers streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and others. To ensure a streamlining of its services, Sony has decided that it will be removing the video content, like movies and shows, that was available on the store.

This decision will take effect from the 31st of August, this year. Vanessa Lee, the Head of Video Business, Sony Interactive Entertainment, announced this on the official PlayStation blog earlier today.

The community has been using PlayStation as a platform to stream content on ad-based and subscription-based entertainment streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc. According to Lee, this is what led Sony to make this decision.

In the blog post, she said,

“At SIE, we strive to provide the best entertainment experience for PlayStation fans, and that means evolving our offerings as customer needs change. We’ve seen tremendous growth from PlayStation fans using subscription-based and ad-based entertainment streaming services on our consoles.

“With this shift in customer behavior, we have decided to no longer offer movie and TV purchases and rentals through PlayStation Store as of August 31, 2021.”  

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Those who have already purchased movies or shows off the PlayStation Store can rest assured. Users will still retain the content they have already purchased, as Lee explains. However, there are some fans who are not quite happy with this decision.

But is the PlayStation community happy with this?

There have been many comments on the said blog post that are really unhappy with the decision. For some, the reason is nostalgia while for others, the reason is the range of content that is available on the PlayStation Store.

A user, mystery75, writes: “Disappointing news. Most people won’t care about this but I found PlayStation to be a great place to buy certain movies and tv episodes that aren’t available on the streaming services I already have.”

Skyler_Hawkins, yet another user, writes: “This is really heartbreaking to hear. I have been buying movies from the PlayStation Store since the PS3. They always have the best sales and I don’t want to keep getting more and more subscriptions. I just want to buy a movie and owe it and I want to give Sony the money for it, is that too much to ask. I owe the digital PS5 so now my only opinion is streaming, I feel very let down.”

How do you feel about this impending streamlining attempt?