Sony’s PlayStation disc factory has already been reused

the The video game disc is deadAnd Sony was planning To kill him For some time, according to a report from Austria. The man who leads Sony’s disc manufacturing operations, Sony DADC President Dietmar Tanzer, He said ORF Salzberg The company’s Thalgau factory produces 600,000 discs a day, half of which are destined for PlayStation — but since it will only make 10 percent of that volume in 2028, it plans to retrain all 300 employees to work on micro-optical lenses instead.

Thaljaw is not just one From Sony disc factories. It is where the disc manufacturing division is headquarteredIt appears to be the only remaining wholly owned disc manufacturing facility. Sony had manufactured discs in the United States for decades, originally in Terre Haute, Indiana and later in New Jersey, but closed the latter plant. In 2011 He moved all manufacturing industries from Indiana to Thalgau In 2022. Today, the Indiana facility Marketing itself to automakers Who need help packing and assembling headlights and the like instead.

This transformation did not happen overnight. A behind-the-scenes video from December 2024 shows that the Thalgau factory was already working on microlenses as of that time:

These lenses are also created using discs:

ORF Salzberg He writes that Sony has now invested €30 million to manufacture these microlenses, and that mass production could begin “as early as next year.”

Microlenses are theoretically used in all sorts of emerging applications where you might want to bend light, including headphones, but it looks like Sony may cater to automakers here too. Gave the head of Sony’s precision optics department ORF Salzberg Example: “Car turn signal dropped on asphalt.”

All of this means that Sony didn’t make this decision in haste, and is unlikely to change its mind though. Predictable backlash. It’s been cutting back on disc manufacturing for decades, and it’s finally ripping off the band-aid with PlayStation.

According to Sony’s DADC website, it has produced more than 26.4 billion discs to date – the vast majority of which, 23 billion of themManufactured between 1983 and 2022 in Terre Haute, Indiana.