Sony clarifies disc plant cutback: 10% fewer discs, not 90%
Sony says its Thalgau disc factory will see output fall by only 10% by 2028, correcting earlier reports of a 90% reduction, even as the company broadly moves away from physical game discs.
Sony still intends to stop producing new video games on discs in January 2028, but the company now says its last disc manufacturing plant will not scale down as dramatically as earlier reports suggested.
Two months after reports emerged that Sony's final disc factory was already being repurposed, the company's disc manufacturing division says one widely repeated detail was inaccurate. Reports initially suggested the division's president had said the plant in Thalgau, Austria, would make 90% fewer discs in 2028. In fact, output is expected to fall by only 10% in 2028, an unnamed Sony DADC spokesperson told games journalist Brian Crecente.
The spokesperson said the earlier statement, from president Dietmar, referred to an overall product volume decline of 10%, not a drop to 10% of current volumes.
Sony DADC did not answer The Verge's fact-check request, including whether it is still restructuring and retraining all 300 employees at the plant to work on microlenses instead of discs, as Austrian broadcaster ORF reported in July. The company also declined to provide Crecente with further details.
One reason the transition may move more slowly: even if Sony stops producing brand-new games on disc after January 2028, it will continue allowing publishers to place re-orders for existing PlayStation disc games.
Even if PlayStation discs remain available longer than expected, the broader outlook for physical game ownership remains uncertain. Several major publishers have not joined Microsoft's disc-to-digital program, and Sony has recently argued in legal proceedings that reasonable consumers cannot really believe they own a game after purchasing it, because multiple copies of a game can exist at the same time.
