Back in 2024, Sony announced that it would be ceasing production of recordable optical discs. This includes Blu-ray discs, the format which the company pioneered. More recently, the company announced that it is also “discontinuing shipment of all Blu-ray disc recorder models from February 2026 onwards”.
This comes via machine translation of the announcement, which was made earlier in the week. The announcement lists models released in 2023 and 2024, as well as saying that “there will be no successor models”. This suggests that the company is exiting the market entirely. But reports claim to cite the company saying that Blu-ray players will still continue to be shipped for now.
Almost The End Of An Era
The Blu-ray became the industry standard two decades ago. Sony launched the first recorder for the format back in 2003, which was followed by the launch of the PS3, the first console to feature the format. It won the format war with HD DVD soon after, and it became a mainstay for home entertainment for awhile. Until streaming came along anyway, and physical media started seeing its decline.
Of course, it’s understandable that Sony, being among the pioneers of Blu-ray, is also among those that held on to it for the longest. Samsung made its way out of Blu-ray players as early as 2019. But as long as Sony is making players, there will still be a place for movies coming in physical format.
To say nothing of the videogames market of course. While the starting point of the next console generation remains uncertain, partially thanks to the memory supply crisis, it doesn’t look like either of the console platforms will be changing their choice of physical media format. Unless they decide to drop the physical format entirely and go fully digital, which is unlikely since attempts to do always-online were made before, with predictably bad results.
(Source: Sony, Asahi, Straits Times)