A recent report from The Mainichi indicated that Sony plans to cut up to 250 jobs at its optical media plant, offering workers early retirement as it prepares to phase out the production of recordable discs.
Sony confirmed this in an interview with AV Watch, stating it would cease the development and production of recordable optical media discs, including Blu-ray. While Sony will continue producing Blu-ray discs for games and movies, it’s anticipated that these, too, will eventually be phased out as the global market shifts toward a fully digital future.
The Sony representative emphasized, “We are not considering moving overseas,” marking the beginning of the end for consumer recordable Blu-ray discs.
Recordable discs may be slower in terms of storage, but they provide a reliable means for long-term data storage. A single-layer recordable Blu-ray disc can hold 25GB of data, while a quad-layer disc can hold up to 128GB, though the latter comes at a much higher cost.
If you use Blu-ray to archive your data, now is the time to start purchasing recordable BD discs while supplies last, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have a couple of spools of recordable DVDs on hand, especially since they can be used to burn games for modified console systems such as the original Xbox or PlayStation 2.
Although Sony will continue to sell B2B products by manufacturing them in advance, the company will determine the specific end date for consumer products through discussions with distribution partners such as mass retailers. For now, these products will remain available.
While Sony continues Blu-ray production for corporate customers and the film industry, the future of optical media looks bleak, at least for Sony, especially when you consider the fact that Sony themselves recorded a whopping 118 million monthly active userbase on the PlayStation Network and the fact that their digital download rates have reached nearly 80%
The spokesperson added, “We aim to continue our business at an appropriate scale in line with the market environment and return to profitability through three measures: (1) the gradual termination of development and production and the reduction of the size of our workforce in the recordable optical disc media business, (2) the reduction of the size of our personnel in the tape media business, and (3) the transition to a single-company structure from April 2025 and the shift to efficient operations in line with the scale of our business.”
Today, nearly all forms of media entertainment have gone digital. Even if you purchase a physical disc of a modern video game, you’re often locked into DRM platforms such as Steam, Epic Games, or a corresponding gaming console. This means you don’t truly own your purchases, as evidenced by Sony’s track record of “accidentally” deleting PlayStation players’ digital purchases and removing them from their PSN accounts.
Both Microsoft and Sony are pushing towards an all-digital future for their gaming consoles. Microsoft is leading this shift, and Sony is following suit given the fact they offer a $100 discount on the PlayStation 5 if you opt for the digital-only version, which lacks a disc drive.
This forces players to download and install large games, like Call of Duty, which often exceed 100GB. This setup limits you to a few games before needing to purchase additional storage given that the actual usable amount of storage you can use from the PS5’s 825GB SSD comes in at around 670 GB.
Digital media primarily benefits corporations rather than consumers. Piracy remains the only true form of digital ownership since users can be restricted or blocked from accessing their legally purchased digital goods if their accounts are banned.
Or maybe the game you spent money on was a live service title that required a constant internet connection to access without the ability to play offline, in which case the game will simply cease to exist and will be removed from your library.
The decline in physical media consumption is evident, with fewer people going to the movies due to the convenience of subscription services, despite the increasing costs and limited selections.
Console hardware has advanced significantly, but developers stopped optimizing and compressing data once Blu-ray drives were adopted by both major console manufacturers. This led to larger game sizes.
The days of simply inserting a disc and playing are gone. Now, you must install the game and download mandatory day-one updates, which can sometimes censor content.
It’s surprising to see Sony wind down its Blu-ray production, but considering that many children prefer in-game microtransactions over new games, and both Sony and Microsoft are pivoting towards live service models, physical media is effectively dead. It’s just taking time for this reality to fully sink in.
