For the slim fraction of people who liked to buy and/or rent movies and series from the PlayStation Store there’s some bad news today as Sony will be pulling the plug on these offerings.

Later this year these options will be removed from the store according to an announcement from Vanessa Lee, Head of Video Business at Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE).

“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,” Lee writes.

Those who have already spent money on purchases don’t need to worry as they will stick around, though we’re not sure for how long. Licencing of content is a tricky business and just because Sony is saying that purchases will still be available there’s no timeframe for that availability given.

“When this change takes effect, users can still access movie and TV content they have purchased through PlayStation Store for on-demand playback on their PS4, PS5 and mobile devices. We thank our fans for their continued support, and we look forward to further enhancing the entertainment experience on PlayStation,” Lee ends.

While it’s, usually bad for us, the consumers, to have less choices, we don’t think this is a particularly big blow to the industry. We’ve never heard a single person express favouritism for movies and TV on the PlayStation Store, and to be honest this announcement is the first time it’s come into public discussion for years.

Aside from a lack of vocal users there are just so many streaming services available today and other, more prominent places to buy / rent digital content.