No one is aware that the physical format is experiencing a real debacle: more and more player manufacturers have been abandoning the format. panasonic, sony and Oppo They stopped doing it in 2018, Samsung in 2019 and LG in December 2024. But The last one who announced his abandonment has something symbolic: it is Sony, inventor of the Blu-Ray format, who has announced that it is stopping manufacturing several physical formats, after announcing a series of layoffs at its factories.
In addition to recordable Blu-Rays, in February it will stop manufacturing MiniDiscs and MiniDV tapes, formats that were already clearly obsolete. The company has confirmed it in a message on your website where it also makes it clear that there will be no models that will succeed these formats, so it is not that it is seeking to evolve what we have already known, as Blu-Ray succeeded DVD. Once stock is exhausted, they will not be restocked in stores.
This is a commercially logical decision that will devastate collectors and that destroys the intention of other brands, such as LG, to return to manufacturing players if the winds sounded favorable in the future. With this notice from Sony, the format is effectively adjusted, since We are not talking about a mere manufacturer of record playersbut from one of the most important manufacturers of the discs themselves.
Significantly, apart from support the manufacturing of the new formatSony was its main distributor thanks to the expansion of Playstation consoles. Both the PS3, as well as the subsequent 4 and 5, included a Blu-Ray reader, and were decisive in establishing not only the format in the video game industry, but also in the film industry. Also very significantly, it is in recent years, when the format has begun to decline in favor of digital, both Microsoft and Sony have announced versions without a disc reader of their consoles. Playstation 5 Pro has been the first console to be launched without a version with disk readerwhich must be purchased separately.
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