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Sony’s PlayStation disc factory is already being repurposed<div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1">The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSTHgruGe-M">video game disc is dead</a>, and Sony’s been planning <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/960160/sony-playstation-disc-production-ending">to kill it</a> for some time, according to a report out of Austria. The man who leads Sony’s discmaking operations, Sony DADC president Dietmar Tanzer, <a href="https://salzburg.orf.at/stories/3360879/">told <em>ORF Salzburg</em></a> 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.</p></div><div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1">Thalgau isn’t just <em>one</em> of Sony’s disc plants. <a href="https://www.sonydadc.com/">It’s where the disc-making division is headquartered</a>, and appears to be its only remaining wholly owned disc manufacturing facility. Sony made discs in the United States for decades, originally in Terre Haute, Indiana and later in New Jersey, but it closed the latter plant <a href="https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/nj-sony-plant-closing-after-more-than-50-years/2142981/">in 2011</a> and moved all manufacturing from Indiana to Thalgau <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-europe-indiana-austria-terre-haute-e26f9ee8742a85029639c21e7b7c2d94">in 2022</a>. Today, the Indiana facility <a href="https://www.sonydadc.com/productsandservices/assemblyandpackaging">markets itself to automakers</a> who need help packaging and assembling headlights and the like instead.</p></div><div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1">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:</p></div><div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1">Those lenses, too, are created using discs:</p></div><div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1"><em>ORF Salzburg</em> writes that Sony has now invested €30 million to manufacture these microlenses, and that mass production may begin “as early as next year.”</p></div><div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1">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. The head of Sony’s micro optics division gave <em>ORF Salzburg</em> the example of “a car turn signal that is projected onto asphalt.”</p></div><div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1">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 <a href="https://www.theverge.com/games/960212/sony-playstation-killing-discs-digital-preservation">predictable backlash</a>. It’s been winding down disc manufacturing for decades, and it’s ripping off one last band-aid with PlayStation.</p></div><div><p class="duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1">According to Sony DADC’s website, it has produced over 26.4 billion discs to date — the vast majority, <a href="https://www.sonydadc.com/contact-locations-2/site-us/">23 billion of them</a>, were made between 1983 and 2022 in Terre Haute, Indiana.</p></div>#Sonys #PlayStation #disc #factory #repurposedGaming,News,PlayStation
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