Sony repurposes PlayStation disc plant: microlens production starts in 2027

Sony says it’s putting about €30 million into repurposing its Sony DADC plant in Thalgau, Austria. The factory is moving away from pressing PlayStation discs and toward making optical microlenses, with mass production of those lenses scheduled to begin in 2027.

At the moment, the Thalgau site produces around 600,000 discs a day, and roughly half of them are for PlayStation. But Sony reportedly expects disc orders to drop to about 10% of today’s volume by 2028. So the new plan is microlenses, with full-scale production set for 2027 and aimed at automotive ADAS, projected turn signals, and AR and VR hardware.

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The move also lines up with Sony’s broader PlayStation shift away from physical games as buying habits keep moving toward digital. Nearly 80% of game sales were digital in 2025, compared with about 13% in 2013. And once you cut manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and retail costs, the margins get better too.

For anyone who still buys physical PlayStation games, the signal here is pretty obvious. Sony says its roughly 300 workers in Thalgau are expected to be retrained rather than laid off. Still, the usual trade-offs of an all-digital future don’t go away: weaker preservation, fewer ownership options, and no resale market for new physical releases.

You won’t be downloading anything from this Sony announcement. Still, it’s a pretty clear sign that Sony sees a much smaller future for discs.

Author: Jesús Bosque

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