Goodbye! Sony Is Already Converting Its Last Disc Factory

Sony announced on July 1, 2026 that physical disc production for new PlayStation games will end in January 2028, with new releases sold only in digital formats through the PlayStation Store and at retailers. The same day, Austrian public broadcaster ORF reported what that decision means on the factory floor: Sony's last wholly owned disc plant is already being rebuilt around a different product.

The Sony DADC facility in Thalgau, near Salzburg, is the headquarters of Sony's disc manufacturing arm and currently ships about 600,000 discs a day. PlayStation titles account for roughly half of that output, DADC chief Dietmar Tanzer told ORF, and new orders make up about 20 percent of the PlayStation share. By his arithmetic, the digital shift directly hits around 10 percent of the plant's total volume in 2028. Some English-language coverage has read that figure as output collapsing to 10 percent of current levels, a claim the original quote does not support.

The replacement business is micro optics. Sony has invested about €30 million (roughly $34 million) in equipment to manufacture optical microlenses, miniaturized components that focus and steer light in tight spaces. Markus Streibl, who heads the Micro Optics unit at Sony DADC, gave ORF a concrete example, a car turn signal projected onto the asphalt. Secondary coverage points to further applications in AR and VR headsets, camera sensors, and fiber optics. Test operations are already running with workers pulled from the disc lines, and mass production is slated to begin in 2027.

The plant's 300 employees were informed of the restructuring on July 1, the same day the public learned PlayStation was going all digital. Tanzer told ORF the company intends to keep headcount at that level and retrain staff at scale, though he stopped short of a firm guarantee when pressed on job security.