Nintendo's biggest cartridge supplier quits ROM chips
Macronix declares its game-chip output at an end while AI memory demand absorbs the capacity, some physical Switch games already cost more than the download
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arstechnica.com
Macronix, the Taiwanese chipmaker that supplies the ROM chips inside Nintendo's game cartridges, told investors that its ROM production "has reached its end" and that it will begin "gradually decoupling from the game industry." The announcement, reported by the Taiwanese outlet BigGo Finance, removes the main source of the silicon behind Switch and Switch 2 cartridges. The decision was not driven by players abandoning games.
The AI industry's appetite for memory has already pushed up prices for RAM, SSDs and graphics cards, and it has now reached the game shelf. Macronix's ROM output shrank 39 percent over the past year, and ROM accounts for just 5 percent of the company's business — crowded out, the firm said, by more lucrative NOR- and NAND-based memory and eMMCs, the chips that AI infrastructure buys in volume. Production is stuck at 25,000 12-inch wafers per month, and the $1.2 billion Macronix has committed to new capacity will take a year or more to come online. Every wafer spent on game cartridges is a wafer the memory market will pay more for.
Analyst David Gibson notes that Macronix has been Nintendo's "main memory chip maker" for physical cartridges. Nintendo says it has no plans to give up on cartridges and is turning to remaining suppliers such as Rohm and Lapis Semiconductor. The strain already shows at the till: earlier this year Nintendo began charging more for some physical games than for the identical download, and last year the publisher Inin committed to a full Switch cartridge release of R-Type Dimensions III only after two new, smaller cartridge sizes brought the cost down. Digital sales made up 61.5 percent of Nintendo's software business in the second quarter of 2026, up slightly from a year before. Sony has already left physical game production behind.
Nintendo said last month that it has no plans to give up on game cartridges in the near future. Its main supplier of them has told investors that production has reached its end.