Sony's shift away from new PlayStation game discs is already changing the work inside one of its most important disc facilities. The company's plant in Thalgau, Austria is being retooled for micro optics production as disc output is expected to fall sharply by 2028.
According to ORF Salzburg, Sony DADC currently produces about 600,000 discs a day at the Thalgau site. Sony DADC CEO Dietmar Tanzer told the outlet that PlayStation accounts for roughly half of the plant's volume, with new orders representing about 20 percent of that PlayStation work. By 2028, he said the company is talking about roughly 10 percent of the current volume.
That timeline lines up with Sony's wider move away from boxed PlayStation games. Sony announced this week that new games released on PlayStation consoles will move to digital-only formats from January 2028, while games already released on disc or planned for disc before then are not part of the cutoff.
Sony wants to keep Thalgau's 300 jobs
The Thalgau change is not being presented as a closure. ORF reports that 300 employees work at the plant and were told about the restructuring this week, with Tanzer saying Sony wants to keep that headcount. The plan is to retrain staff for micro optics, a business Sony DADC has already been preparing with about €30 million in investment.
Markus Streibl, who heads Sony DADC's micro optics work, described the field to ORF as the miniaturization of optical systems and elements used to focus and direct light in very small spaces. One example he gave was a car indicator projected onto asphalt. Test operations are already running, and Sony is aiming to begin series production next year.
The shift makes the PlayStation disc deadline feel less like a distant policy change and more like a production plan already moving through Sony's supply chain. It also adds new context to the reaction from collectors, physical publishers and preservation groups, some of whom have already criticized the effect on boxed editions once new PlayStation games no longer ship on discs.
The Verge, which also covered the ORF report, noted that Thalgau is where Sony's disc-making division is headquartered and appears to be Sony's only remaining wholly owned disc manufacturing facility. That does not mean every PlayStation disc comes from one line in Austria, but it does make the restructuring a clear marker of where Sony expects the business to go.
Sony has said the 2028 cutoff will not affect existing disc libraries. The bigger change is what happens after that date, when new PlayStation releases are expected to be sold digitally even if retailers remain part of the sales process through codes or other digital formats. For players who care about lending, resale, preservation or simply owning a boxed copy with a disc inside, Thalgau's new direction is another sign that the runway is getting shorter.