Sony's exit is a sign of the times for physical media, but not necessarily the end of the road.The Latest Tech News, Delivered to Your Inbox

Sony announced that the company is officially halting the production of recordable Blu-ray, MiniDisc and MD Data disc media as well as MiniDV cassettes. It's another step in the slow decline of physical media as Sony said that production of the optical media will end in February this year.

Sony is officially ending production of recordable Blu-rays. In an announcement from Japan spotted by Tom’s Hardware, Sony Storage Media Solutions said it will stop manufacturing the discs in February, alongside recordable MiniDiscs, MD-Data, and MiniDV cassettes, adding, “there will be no successor models.”

February 2025 will see the end of three formats that Sony played a key role in developing. The company will then cease production of recordable Blu-ray discs, MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes. It may come as a surprise that these media are still being produced at all, as Sony launched its last MiniDisc system back in 2013.

There was a time when Blu-ray discs reigned supreme, but the era of physical media now firmly exists in the shadow of digital streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. But over 18 years after its worldwide debut,

Blu-ray discs have been part of the digital media landscape for almost 20 years, but fewer and fewer people have optical drives to use them. As such, Sony doesn't see the need to keep pumping out recordable Blu-rays.