Sony announces the end of the MiniDisc

Get out your calendars—Sony will be making its final MiniDisc stereo system in March, marking an end to the 20-year-old media format.

MiniDisc was launched in 1992, but never saw widespread success outside of Japan. Its rise in the West was stymied by the existing popularity of the CD and the growth of the MP3 format and its smaller, more battery-efficient portable players.

It was based around small, rewritable optical disks housed in a plastic shell with a storage capacity of 80 minutes. An attempted reboot in 2004 as Hi-MD failed miserably, and sales of portable MiniDisc players ended in 2011.

But the format did prove popular among sound engineers and journalists, who used MiniDisc players to record sounds, jingles and interviews before adequate solid-state storage options arrived.

The announcement was made alongside the release of a teaser video for a Playstation press conference, where it's widely expected that a new console will be announced.