A recent report indicated that Sony plans to cut up to 250 jobs at its optical media plant, offering workers early retirement in preparation for phasing out its recordable disc production. The company has now confirmed this when it said in an interview with AV Watch that it would cease the development and production of recordable optical media discs, including Blu-ray. Furthermore, the Sony representative said, "We are not considering moving overseas," signaling the beginning of the end of recordable Blu-ray discs for consumers.
If you use Blu-ray to archive your data, you need to start purchasing recordable BD while supplies last. However, business clients and cinema buffs need not panic yet. "We will continue to sell B2B products by making them in advance, and for consumer products, we will decide on the specific end date in the future through discussions with distribution partners such as mass retailers, but we will continue to sell them for the time being."
The end of recordable Blu-ray production will reduce the number of options users have for reliable long-term storage of their data. Hard drives and SSDs last an average of five years, while Blu-ray discs could last decades, with some newer optical discs capable of lasting a hundred years.
Despite their longevity, Blu-ray discs are limited by capacity, with the largest limited to 125GB. While some Chinese researchers were able to create an optical disc format that can store up to 125TB of data, it's still in the research phase and not yet available commercially. This limitation is probably why consumers prefer the convenience of cloud storage for backups.
"The growth of the cold storage market has not reached our expectations, and the performance of the storage media business as a whole continues to be in the red," a Sony Group spokesperson said. "And we have determined that it is necessary to review the business structure to improve profitability."
Even though Sony still retains Blu-ray production for corporate customers and the film industry, the future of optical media is bleak, at least for Sony. The spokesperson added, "We aim to continue our business at an appropriate scale in line with the market environment and return to profitability through three measures: (1) the gradual termination of development and production and the reduction of the size of our workforce in the recordable optical disc media business, (2) the reduction of the size of our personnel in the tape media business, and (3) the transition to a single-company structure from April 2025 and the change to efficient operations in line with the scale of our business."
