News written by Petteri Pyyny (January, 2025)

An unexpected announcement came from the Japanese electronics giant, Sony. While the news that the company will cease production of writable, blank Blu-ray discs in February 2025 due to declining demand is less surprising, it marks a significant step in the ongoing retreat from Blu-ray technology. Sony had already signaled this move in the summer of 2024, when it revealed plans to scale down the production of recordable Blu-ray discs. A little later, South Korean tech giant LG also announced the discontinuation of Blu-ray player production at the end of the year.

What is more surprising, however, is Sony's decision to also stop the production of writable MiniDiscs and MiniDV tapes.

MiniDisc, a Sony-developed storage format introduced in 1992, was initially aimed at replacing CDs for music listening. It gained a brief period of popularity in the 1990s but was quickly overtaken by recordable CDs and, later, MP3 files at the turn of the millennium. Sony ceased production of MiniDisc players in 2013. While the MiniDisc format is largely considered a footnote in the history of digital media, the MD Data format, used for computer data storage, was even more obscure.

For the past eight years, gamers have eagerly awaited a successor to the Nintendo Switch, which was first launched in 2017. During this time, Nintendo has remained relatively silent on new console developments, focusing instead on retro releases and even launching a Nintendo alarm clock while fans waited for the next big hardware announcement.

Now, the long-anticipated successor has finally arrived, with the Nintendo Switch 2 making its debut in an official video broadcast by Nintendo. The new console is larger than the original Switch, sporting a dark gray color scheme, but it retains the same portable, handheld gaming experience that made the original so popular. Interestingly, Nintendo has chosen to stick with the "Switch 2" name, which is somewhat out of character for the company, as they typically introduce completely new names for each new console generation.

Perhaps the most exciting news for fans is that the Switch 2 will be backward compatible with the original Switch. This means that games purchased digitally or physically for the first Switch will also work on the new console, a rare move in Nintendo's history when transitioning to a new system.