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Early in, early out. Sony’s PSP-based digital comics shop is officially closing at the end of the month. Comics will be unavailable to purchase after October 30. Previous purchases will still be available until mid-January 2013, and “After this date, users will no longer be able to re-download any previously purchased content.”

The PSP store was one of the earliest outposts of digital comics—back when people wondered if anyone would read digital comics—and it seems to have been an early outlier but hardly a behemoth. Marvel definitely went deeper than other publishers, but it ceased to be spoken of much after comiXology and other dedicated digital providers emerged.

The PSP itself has been replaced by the PS Vita, so you can store it right next to your SyQuest disk and DIN plug collection. It seems that if you already downloaded stuff you can still read it, but probably not that many people did. What is more likely to happen is that the PSP Comics Store going away will reignite all the talk of digital obsolescence for various formats as digital providers come and go, as they are wont to do.

Our advice? Digital hoarding! God forbid the PDF ever becomes obsolete…

4 COMMENTS

  1. And there is the problem with digital comics.

    The store closes down and eventually you will be unable to re-download your purchased content. Now, from the post I take it they were only scanned PDF’s, files easy to back up and read with any PDF reading app, but what about these other comic book reading apps? Are those issues a custom file type? Are they easily accessible to back up and read with another program should something happen with those content providers?

    I am sticking with it old school.

  2. At one point I had a publisher (who shall remian nameless to protect the guilty) tell me that PSP comics sales were very significant for them. Especially for media-based titles.

    -B

  3. Right. Here is where the whole digital world fantasy starts to get literally unreal. “Sorry, that lifetime Gym membership is no longer valid. The gym is out of business.” Update that to say “the place where we leased our comics to you is now closed.”

  4. The benefit of the current digital Marvel store is that although it is run by ComiXology, it is Marvel’s own thing, and the comics should be available as long as Marvel itself stays around. They SHOULD be able to contact these accounts and offer to transfer the books to a corresponding Marvel account.

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