A possible surprise twist has emerged in light of Sony’s decision to stop making physical disc games for PlayStation.
A startup called Folio Photonic claims they have made a new optical disc format that is a proper upgrade to UHD Blu-Rays, such that they can replace 4K UHD if and when it retires.
Called the Folio Disc, it can hold a theoretical file size of 1 TB, or 1000 GB. UHD Blu-Rays, which were first introduced in the market in 2016, have a maximum capacity of 100 GB.
Folio also claims that Folio Discs have a media cost of only $ 3 per TB. That’s much cheaper than, say, hard disc drives, which have a media cost of $20 per TB.
Most importantly, Folio claims they started scaling manufacturing capability 3 years ago, and both Folio discs and drives could be available as soon as this year.
There’s still a lot of questions about this Folio Disc format. A key point is if it can match the read/write speeds of an SSD.
But if and when Sony retires UHD Blu-Rays completely, it may not mean the complete end of physical media – or physical games.