New optical discs will hold up to 1 TB. They appeared amid Sony's abandonment of physical games

Amid Sony's preparations to abandon physical game releases for PlayStation, startup Folio Photonic introduced a new optical media format. Folio Disc can store up to 1 TB of data — ten times more than modern UHD Blu-ray discs with a maximum capacity of 100 GB.

The company claims that the production of the new media will be cheap: about $3 per 1 TB compared to approximately $20 for storing the same amount of data on traditional hard drives.

According to Folio Photonic, the technology has been under development for three years. If all goes according to plan, the first discs and compatible drives will appear on the market in 2026.

Many questions remain. The startup has not disclosed read and write speeds, so it is unknown whether the new media will be able to compete with modern SSDs, which have become the standard for PCs and consoles.

Sony recently announced that it will stop releasing physical editions of PlayStation games starting in 2028. If Folio Photonic's technology proves successful, optical media may still have a chance to make a comeback.