You can still download purchases from the PS3 store; in fact you can still buy things from it (but only because of an outcry when Sony announced they were closi

You can still download purchases from the PS3 store; in fact you can still buy things from it (but only because of an outcry when Sony announced they were closing it). I'm pretty sure you can still download past purchases from the Wii store too. Of course, those kinds of "we're keeping the servers up after the store is closed" situations are necessarily limited so it's just a matter of time. As you say, once the calculus of remaining users and the reputational damage of shutting down gets small enough then it'll happen. On the other hand, Playstation has a worse set of problems going on: systems apparently need to phone home if their CMOS battery dies or is replaced, and if those servers aren't around anymore or you have no internet, even physical copies don't play. (As far as I know this is just about resetting the clock but it's still a network dependency.)