Nineteen years after triumphing over Toshiba’s HD DVD, Sony has announced it will discontinue the production of Blu-ray, MiniDisc, and MiniDV cassettes in Japan. The company confirmed that there will be no successors to these storage media formats.
Set to conclude its consumer optical media production by mid-2024, Sony emphasized that it will still manufacture these products for business and corporate clients as long as it remains economically viable. The rise of streaming services has significantly impacted the commercial viability of physical media sales.
The Blu-ray disc was first introduced in 2000 as a successor to DVD and a competitor to Toshiba’s HD DVD. Both formats became publicly available in 2006, with HD DVD ultimately losing the competition. Sony’s success was bolstered by strategic partnerships with major film studios and the integration of Blu-ray technology into the PlayStation 3 gaming console.
It is important to note that Sony will continue to produce discs for games and movies, ensuring that physical media will not completely disappear from the market. Thus, while the landscape is changing, we have not yet reached the end of physical media.
