Sony has been preparing for the end of disc-based PlayStation games for quite some time, based on a report by ORF Salzburg, the regional publication of Austria’s national broadcasting network. The management at Sony’s Digital Audio Disc Corporation told ORF that the company has already invested €30 million ($34 million) into converting its disc factory in Thalgau, Salzburg into a plant for optical microlenses. 

Those changes have apparently been in the works for quite some time, though management only told Thalgau workers about them on July 1, when Sony announced that PlayStation is going all in on digital starting in January 2028. Optical microlenses can manipulate light and are typically used in camera sensors, AR/VR headsets, fiber optic networks and medical devices.

The Thalgau plant currently manufactures 600,000 discs every day, with half of that volume going to PlayStation games. Sony DADC CEO Dietmar Tanzer expects disc production to drop to 10 percent of the plant’s current output in 2028. As The Verge notes, the Thalgau facility isn’t just one of Sony’s disc-making factories, it’s where DADC is based. DADC used to have a mass manufacturing facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where it made 23 billion discs from 1983 until it closed in 2022. From that time until today, it has manufactured 3.4 billion more discs. 

Tanzer told ORF that the company intends to retain the 300 employees currently working for it at the Thalgau plant. They will be retrained for the production of optical microlenses in the near future, since Sony plans to start manufacturing them as soon as next year.