Sony is accelerating its bid farewell to the era of game discs, and the company's last self-owned disc factory has begun to transform into a new business form. According to Austrian media ORF Salzburg, Dietmar Tanzer, president of Sony DADC, Sony's global optical disc business, said that the factory in Thalgau, Austria currently produces about 600,000 discs a day, half of which are used for PlayStation games, but production is expected to be reduced to about 10% of the current level by 2028. Against this backdrop, Sony plans to retrain all approximately 300 employees at the plant to produce optical microlenses.
The Talgao plant is not only a production site but also the headquarters of Sony's optical disc business. It is also Sony's only optical disc manufacturing facility that is still wholly owned by the company. Sony previously had a long history of manufacturing compact discs in the United States, first operating factories in Terre Haute, Indiana, and later New Jersey. The New Jersey plant closed in 2011, while all Indiana disc production will be moved to Talgau, Austria, in 2022. Today, the original factory in Indiana has been converted to provide packaging and component assembly services for automobile manufacturers, such as car light components.
In fact, Sony’s transformation of the Talgao factory did not start today. A behind-the-scenes video from December 2024 shows that the factory had begun producing micro-optical devices such as microlenses at that time. According to the video, these microlenses are also manufactured using "optical discs" as carriers: "Up to 60 micro-optical devices can be accommodated on a single optical disc," the automatically generated subtitle reads. This means that processes and production lines once used to press CDs, DVDs, and game discs are being repurposed to mass-produce precision optical components.
ORF Salzburg reported that Sony has invested approximately 30 million euros in Talgao’s microlens business and plans to start large-scale mass production as soon as next year. Microlenses are regarded as a key optical component for emerging applications and can be used in a variety of scenarios that require fine control of light, including next-generation head-mounted display devices. At the same time, Sony seems to be extending these optical capabilities to the automotive industry, providing optical and component packaging services to car manufacturers, continuing the business route it has already launched at its Indiana factory.
At a time when traditional game discs are almost "dead", Sony is reshaping its last optical disc factory to prepare for the next generation of optical technology after the digital distribution era. Through large-scale retraining of employees and reinvestment in production lines, this base that once supported PlayStation disc production will transform into an important manufacturing center for microlenses and micro-optical devices, continuing Sony's accumulation in the field of optics and manufacturing on another technology path.