Sony Officially Killing Disc Manufacturing
The video game disc is dead, and Sony has been planning to kill it for some time, according to a report out of Austria.
Sony DADC president Dietmar Tanzer told ORF Salzburg that the company’s Thalgau plant produces 600,000 discs every day, half of which are for PlayStation. But since it’ll only be making 10 percent of that volume in 2028, it’s planning to retrain all 300 employees to work on optical microlenses instead.
Sony already invested the cash to convert its last disc-making factory.
Thalgau isn’t just one of Sony’s disc plants. It’s where the disc-making division is headquartered, and appears to be its only remaining wholly owned disc manufacturing facility.
This transition didn’t happen overnight. A behind-the-scenes video from December 2024 shows that the Thalgau plant was already working on microlenses as of then.
Microlenses are theoretically used in all kinds of emerging applications where you might want to bend light, including headsets, but it appears that Sony may cater to automakers here, too.
All of this is to say: Sony didn’t make this decision in a hurry, and it isn’t likely to change its mind despite the predictable backlash.
According to Sony DADC’s website, it has produced over 26.4 billion discs to date — the vast majority, 23 billion of them, were made between 1983 and 2022 in Terre Haute, Indiana.
