The last remaining factory where Sony makes its physical discs is already being repurposed, just days after the company announced it was ceasing physical game production.
According to OLF Salsburg, a national Austrian outlet, the 300-odd employees at Sony’s Thalgau production plant will all keep their jobs in the wake of this news (which is good). They will all be retrained to create microlens rather than physical discs (which is sad). Optical microlenses, for what it’s worth, are key components used in managing power consumption and bandwidth bottlenecks, and are used in headsets and other devices that require precise light control. So you can see why an electronics giant like Sony will need them across its business.
The plant produces 600,000 discs per-year, though according to OLF Salsburg this figure is expected to decrease significantly as Sony moves away from physical disc production. Dietmar Tanzer, the CEO of Sony DADC, the Sony company that makes the discs, provided the outlet with more insight. He claims with this shift by Sony, the factory’s upcoming orders are a mere 10 percent of what they usually are, which makes the re-training a no-brainer.
Sony has been planning this end to disc manufacturing for some time. According to company management who spoke to OLF Salsburg, €30m was invested into new technology to create microlenses, which will become a “new business area” according to Sony DADC head Markus Streibl.
As The Verge points out, this factory in Thalgau appears to be the last remaining disc manufacturing plant for Sony. It had been producing them in the USA previously, but the New Jersey plant was shuttered in 2011.
As such, the ball is already rolling for a true death for physical gaming on PlayStation while the body isn’t even cold. With this factory being repurposed, there will no longer be any producer of PlayStation discs present around the world. Since Sony is the only company able to create these discs, it’s not as though another company can pick up the mantle.
So it’s another piece of tragic news in a week stuffed full of it. Sony also announced the end of support for its PS3 and PS Vita stores, a double whammy of gut punches.
