This whole thing sucks, just as it did for the Wii eShop dying - but the fact that entire generations of digitally available games could be sealed off is basically the worst case scenario people hypothesized at the start of all this. Guessing they would rather put money into selling you a remake than preserving the original. Only hope would be some dev time for an official emulator and a PS5 Pro with some extra horsepower to actually run it.
Of course this all boils down to numbers, control, and Jim Ryan’s opinion about old games being pressed onto PS users. The number of online users on PS3 era systems must be woefully low, as well as sales. Those PS2 games on PS4 must have bombed hard as well. Essentially the message is “Those old games have served their purpose and are no longer needed. It’s too expensive to keep them on life support.” It’s such BS. Imagine if this was the case for classic films, music and novels. “Who needs Dune when you could read Ready Player One?”
Meanwhile you look at MS who is adding 60fps, 4k and Auto HDR to 360 and Original Games and they look awesome, with no additional work from the original devs, the rights holders are earning money, and no new deals need to be made. Their letting the games of their era be presented the best they can, and encouraging revisiting them. Only when a game is remade are they typically delisted in this scenario as well. It’s a very PC like approach, but for $500 and with the ease of a console it’s much easier for the average person to appreciate.
So if they’re actively driving their software underground then get those big hard drives and load ’em up. Sony doesn’t care - but we do.
Edit - Check this out:
Let me play Resistance, Puppeteer, Killzone, inFamous, Ratchet and Motorstorm with this stuff ya jerks!