Sony is cutting 250 jobs at its recordable media manufacturing plant in northeast Japan, according to The Mainichi. The established national newspaper says that cuts are due to the reduced demand for optical media, and the continued rise of streaming services. However, a specialist physical media news outlet asserts that pressed disc production will not be impacted by the cuts at Sony, only the manufacturing of recordable media like CD-R, DVD-R, and BD-R.
The Mainichi says that around 250 jobs will go from Sony’s media manufacturing business in Tagajo, Miyagi Prefecture, in the northeast of the country. Sources close to the matter indicate that at least some of the layoffs will come from offering early retirement packages.
A total of around 670 people currently work at the Sony Tagajo factory. We can’t be certain if the remaining workers should feel safe, as The Mainichi says that Sony will “gradually cease production of optical disc storage media products, including Blu-ray discs.”
Pressed disc production safe?
Physical media entertainment connoisseurs should perhaps not be overly concerned by the Sony optical media production cutting news. In some Community Notes added to a Twitter/X post from Wario64 highlighting this story, the President Of Physical Media claims that the job cuts in the optical media production facility won’t affect pressed discs. Pressed discs are the kinds of optical discs that are mass-produced for the music, video, and gaming markets.
We often hear about the rise of streaming services impacting physical formats – covering content such as music, video, video games, and more. However, both Sony and Microsoft still ship consoles with ODD support, and some ardent physical media devotees insist on physical media to build their music, video, and games collections. Controversially, there have been occasions when previously purchased digital content has become inaccessible, sometimes forever. Yet users are being pushed online as physical outlets withdraw physical media sales. Another benefit touted by physical media fans is one of the greater audio-visual fidelity, compared to streaming.
It has been several years since an optical disc drive (ODD) was an essential component in a desktop or laptop PC. New ODD hardware is surprising to see, or sometimes we see big claims for a new ODD innovation. With optical discs firmly out of fashion among PC users, it seems quite natural that the production of (re)writeable media output is getting phased out at Sony.
ODDs were the backup media of choice for home users from the early-2000s until the mid-2010s. Solutions that currently cover the home backup needs of the masses include external HDDs and SSDs, memory cards, thumb drives, NAS solutions, as well as a large number of cloud storage providers.