Sony should give every developer, who bought the Vita devkit within 12 months before closing down the store their money back. That wouldn't not only be fair, but also good PR for them (and I doubt it would cost them much, since I doubt that they sold many devkits in this time window).

That said, I can't believe some of the sales projections in the article... what were they thinking?

I love both of my Vitas, but if I have to choose between a Vita version and a Switch version, I buy the Switch version.

And I doubt that many Vita-owners (which are by default handheld fans) haven't moved on to the Switch or Switch Lite by now... especially the Switch lite is an affordable handheld with an awesome first and third party library.

Sir Eatsalot was available in the Vita-store for over three years... who hasn't already bought it for the Vita probably won't buy it in the future, no matter if the store closes down or not. Especially with no way of promoting Vita games in the PS-Store since last fall. Game looks cute, I'll buy it in the next Switch-sale.

"Licky the Lucky Lizard Lives Again"is freeware without "in-app purchases", so no financial loss.

The developer of "SwapQuest" himself says, that his game won't have financial loss due to the closing of the Vita-store.

I can't take the estimate of the "Task Force Kampas" dev serious... 20-40% of projected sales profits from the Vita version, if the game is also available on Switch, PC, PS4/5 and Xbox One/Series? 5 -10% at best compared to the other four platforms... all with a much bigger hardware base and much more active community.

If I understand the "PS Store logic" correctly, then cross-buy games including a PS4 version stay in the PS-Store. Even if only the PS4 version is labeled/advertized, Vita+PS3 versions could be further included and you could buy these cross-buy-games with the web-version of the PSStore... so no PS4-hardware necessary. This could be a loophole for games with planned Vita + PS4 version like "Russian Subway Dogs" and "Astro Aqua Kitty"

F. e. the point & click adventure "Guard Duty", which was released cross-buy last year:

If I had to think of a reason for it, I'd say the people who is still playing on the Vita are pretty much guaranteed sales at this point. If you've used the system for this long chances are you are going to continue to use it until further notice, so the sales of each installment are probably nearly the same every time. It's not a big reason, obviously games are going to sell better on much bigger and more active platforms, but it's at least a very safe bet.

And why should the sales of each new installment be nearly the same every time?

Are the tastes of every still active Vita gamer the same?

Do they buy every new Vita game... no matter the quality or the genre or the price?

Doesn't it matter if they also have a Switch and play on both devices?

Will Vita players who also have a Switch prefer to buy the Vita version, although the Switch version offers a higher resolution, often better performance/effects, a better battery life (for less demanding games also running on Vita) and even a proper TV mode?

Less demanding third party games Switch also are often on sale, while Vita game sales haven't been for a long time... in most cases you get the better Switch version also cheaper than the Vita version. So the Switch version should be a no brainer for owners of both Vita and Switch.

I'm imagining that the sales on the Vita follow the later point of a bell curve. They can pretty much only go down, but because there aren't that many costumers left, the changes in sales are probably very slow. Thus giving the devs pretty stable numbers.

But yeah, there's very little reason to choose the Vita version over other platforms, especially at this point in time.

Next let's protest against the closure of blockbuster and the movie rental stores.

So you support selling devkits to an indie studio a month before announcing the storefront is closing without bothering to tell the developer while taking their money?  

Better (but still bad) comparison would be:

All movies in the blockbusters and other movie rental stores are still available in these stores, so the running costs for all these stores still have to be paid.

But there is no revenue for these movies anymore. These movies are just replacements for customers who bought these movies before or still have a running subscription.

Companies take your money for products even if they intend to discontinue it next week. So nothing new here to say the truth. Was there any promise of keeping anything with the sale?

Not sure what your comparison was supposed to be. But the point is that discontinued products won`t be around anymore. People complaining hardly were really sustaining that business anymore.

I would expect a developer to be treated a bit less sleazily than the average consumer by a platform holder.  Selling a consumer a bottle of Crystal Pepsi a week before the beverage is discontinued has no effect on the consumer, because they can still drink the Crystal Pepsi that they paid for.  Selling an indie studio a dev kit for a platform that won't have a storefront in a month is a slimy business tactic, because the developer no longer has a storefront to release their game onto which was the whole purpose of purchasing the devkit in the first place.  

Sony has no direct benefit by stopping to sell digital PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP and Vita games when they still have to offer all these games for redownloads.

They are not saving any space on their servers (because the PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP and Vita data can't be deleted yet) and the whole shop and payment infrastructure has to be kept anyways for buying PS4 and PS5 games.

If they don't want to offer the access to the PS-Store from the PS3-device or Vita-device anymore, they could still offer the PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP and Vita games by accessing them via PS4-store, PS5 store and webbrowser store.

The PS Store wouldn't get more confusing by keeping these legacy games... just put them in a different part of the store:

Search results would begin with PS5 games, followed by PS4 games and then by the legacy games.

The filter preset of the search could exclude legacy by default (with the option to show them).

The only benefit I see for Sony by ditching the legacy games: less competition for the newer games.

And that indirect benefit is not good enough IMHO.