Report Claims PlayStation Has Wanted To Abandon Physical Releases "For Some Time"

A new report coming from a Sony production facility in Austria has claimed that PlayStation has wanted to move away from physical releases for some time, and is already training staff up for other work.

In what has to be one of the most controversial decisions that the company has ever made (which is saying a lot considering the backlash to the PS3's price), PlayStation announced yesterday that it will be ending disc production from the start of 2028. That means PlayStation is going completely digital in less than two years time, which is being taken about as well as you'd expect.

As Sony learned from trying to hype up Spider-Man: Brand New Day with a cheeky tweet after the news dropped, PlayStation fans really aren't taking the news well and are hounding the company for any kind of clarification or hope for change. That doesn't seem very likely, though, as a production facility in Austria claims this has been a long time coming.

PlayStation Has Reportedly Been Planning All-Digital Move For "Some Time"

Staff At A Production Facility Are Already Being Trained On Other Things

As pointed out by Push Square, ORF Salzburg recently shared a report that claims Sony's production facility in Thalgau, Austria, has been aware of what's coming for "quite some time" and has been actively preparing for it. According to ORF Salzburg, 600,000 discs come off the assembly line at Sony's Thalgau plant, making up 50 percent of its volume.

PlayStation Won't Be The First Video Game Company To Abandon Physical Media

How long until Xbox and Nintendo follow in PlayStation's digital footsteps?

That number will drop to around ten percent of the volume in 2028 because of PlayStation's decision to cease production of discs. The report says that 300 employees work at the plant currently, and were told about the plan on Wednesday. Layoffs are not expected, Sony CEO of DADC, Dietmar Tanzer, claims.

We'll see how that goes, as a 90 percent drop doesn't sound like it's going to be very affordable.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the report is that it confirms the "changes have been in the works for some time", which isn't surprising considering the magnitude of the decision. Around €30 million was invested in new technology for manufacturing optical microlenses at the Thalgau plant, with employees already being reassigned and planned to be retrained "extensively".

While this is just one of Sony's plants, it does suggest that it's incredibly unlikely PlayStation is going to reverse course on its move away from physical production, no matter how loud the backlash gets. If, like me, you were hoping the company might see how passionate fans are and consider a change, you might want to accept our horrible all-digital future.

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