Sony has decided to cease development and production of recordable optical media, including Blu-ray discs, as it prepares to shift its business toward an all-digital future. News that Sony may be making such a move first surfaced last week, but it has now been confirmed in an interview with Japanese media outlet Watch AV.
Previous reports Sony has announced that it has cut up to 250 jobs at its Japanese optical media plant. Sony has now confirmed the job cuts and said there are no plans to relocate the plant overseas.
So before you panic about the death of physical media, what does this actually mean? It means that it’s going to get harder to find blank, recordable Blu-ray discs that people with Blu-ray burners can use to back up their data. It’s important to note that people who like to buy physical movies and games have nothing to worry about — at least not yet. Sony says it’s continuing its B2B (or business-to-business) operations, meaning that games and movies for business customers will continue to be printed and produced until they’re no longer profitable. “We will continue to sell B2B products by manufacturing them in advance,” Sony’s statement reads, “and for consumer products, we will decide the precise end date in the future by talking to distribution partners such as mass retailers, but we will continue to sell them for the time being.”
Still, Blu-ray’s loss as a recording medium is significant. While its total storage capacity is much lower than other forms of storage, such as hard drives or SSDs, its lifespan is much longer than its competitors. Some optical discs are capable of storing data for hundreds of years, while most modern hard drives are lucky to last up to five years. And then, of course, there’s cloud storage, the modern data storage fad.
We’re not at the end of the tunnel for physical media yet, but the world has just taken a big step towards a future without them. Even among the PlayStation 5’s controllers, efforts have been made to move the device towards digital. The current slimline PS5 still offers a disc-based model, but the digital-only version is positioned as a more affordable alternative. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a future PlayStation 6 do away with the disc drive entirely.
I guess you should stock up on those burnable Blu-ray discs while you can.
Source: Tom’s gear.
Image: iStock, Sony, Kotaku Australia