Sony appears to be preparing for a future in which video game discs play a far smaller role. According to a report from Austria, Dietmar Tanzer, president of Sony DADC and head of the company’s disc manufacturing operations, told ORF Salzburg that Sony’s plant in Thalgau currently turns out about 600,000 discs a day, with roughly half of that output tied to PlayStation. By 2028, however, the facility is expected to produce only about 10 percent of that volume, prompting Sony to retrain all 300 employees to work on optical microlenses instead.
The Thalgau site is not merely another disc factory in Sony’s network. It serves as the headquarters for the company’s disc-making division and appears to be Sony’s only remaining fully owned disc manufacturing plant. For decades, Sony produced discs in the United States, first in Terre Haute, Indiana, and later in New Jersey. The New Jersey facility closed in 2011, and in 2022 Sony shifted all manufacturing from Indiana to Thalgau. The Indiana site now promotes its services to the automotive industry, including packaging and assembly work for products such as headlights.
Sony’s shift away from discs has been years in the making. A behind-the-scenes video released in December 2024 showed that the Thalgau facility was already involved in microlens work at that point:
Those microlenses are also produced using disc-based technology:
ORF Salzburg reports that Sony has invested €30 million in microlens production, with large-scale manufacturing potentially starting “as early as next year.”
Microlenses can be used in a range of emerging technologies that rely on directing or shaping light, including headset displays. But Sony also appears to be looking closely at automotive applications. The head of Sony’s micro-optics division cited the example of “a car turn signal that is projected onto asphalt” in comments to ORF Salzburg.
Taken together, the moves suggest Sony’s decision is neither sudden nor likely to be reversed, even if it draws an expected reaction from fans who still prefer physical games. The company has been gradually scaling back disc production for decades, and PlayStation now appears to be part of that final transition.
Sony DADC says on its website that it has manufactured more than 26.4 billion discs overall. The overwhelming majority — about 23 billion — were produced in Terre Haute, Indiana, between 1983 and 2022.
