Sony’s largest production site is already preparing its staff to move away from manufacturing discs and start making other products instead.
The site in Thalgau, Austria produces 600,000 discs every day, but that number is expected to drastically drop following Sony‘s announcement that PlayStation games will no longer have physical disc releases starting from January 2028.
A report from Austrian news site ORF.at checked in with the plant to see what its plans were, and whether Sony’s news would result in layoffs for disc manufacturers.
According to Dietmar Tanzer, CEO of DADC (which manufactures Sony’s optical media including PlayStation games, Blu-rays and CDs), PlayStation currently accounts for around 50% of its volume, of which around 20% are new orders.
“We’re looking at roughly 10% of the volume in 2028,” Tanzer told the publication (via machine translation).
Sony has reportedly been anticipating this shift for some time
The plant’s 300 employees were told on Wednesday that it would be undergoing restructuring as a result of Sony’s decision. Despite this, Tanzer says no layoffs are planned.
Sony has reportedly been anticipating this shift for some time, and as such around €30 million has recently been invested in the plant on new equipment designed to make optical microlenses instead, leading to a pivot for the plant.
According to Sony DADC’s head of Micro Optics, Markus Streibl, the tech will become a new area of business for Sony.
“Micro optics is the miniaturization of optical systems and elements and serves to focus and direct light in the smallest possible space,” he explained. “One application would be, for example, a car turn signal that is projected onto asphalt.”
Employees at the plant were reassigned from disc production on Wednesday to start testing the new equipment, with Sony planning to retrain them extensively in the future and begin mass production of optical microlenses next year.
The news may come as a blow to the organisers of numerous petitions which have started appearing online as a result of Sony’s announcement, the most prominent being Don’t Kill the Disc, which was launched by Canadian retailer PNP Games and currently has more than 30,000 signatures.
With Sony already investing tens of millions of Euros in new equipment to retrain its disc manufacturers to make other products, the prospect of a U-turn appears unlikely.
