Macronix, the Taiwanese memory maker whose ROM chips go into Switch and Switch 2 game cards, is leaving that business. The company will bring out no new ROM products and is moving its limited factory capacity to other kinds of memory.
Industry analyst David Gibson was first to point it out, in a post on X on 4 November that draws on Macronix’s latest financial results. ROM made up about 5% of Macronix’s sales in the third quarter, down from 26% a year earlier, and the quarter is the last one for which the company reports ROM sales separately. Macronix’s chairman said capacity is limited and is going to NOR flash and eMMC chips instead, according to the figures Gibson relayed.
Physical Switch games are not about to vanish. Macronix is not Nintendo’s only supplier, and Gibson’s thread points to Rohm (Oki Semiconductor) as another. What worries some fans is the squeeze that follows: with one maker stepping back, supply could tighten, and publishers might lean more on Game-Key Cards, the cartridges that carry a licence key rather than the game itself.
Digital already takes a large share of Nintendo’s software sales. Gibson put it at 61.5% between April and June, against 59.3% a year before, though it has swung between 46.1% and 67.2% over the past 12 months depending on which big games came out. Nintendo has not commented on the Macronix news. It reports earnings on 5 November, the same day the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake reaches Switch 2, and analysts may ask about cartridge supply in the usual question session.
None of this changes the price or availability of games already on shelves. Whether the exit shows up as costlier cartridges, more Game-Key Cards or no change at all will only be clear once Nintendo or its publishers say how they plan to source chips for later releases.
