Key facts
- Macronix said ROM production has shrunk 39 percent in the last year and now represents 5 percent of its business.
- Macronix said its production capacity is stuck at 25,000 12-inch wafers a month, with $1.2 billion in planned new capacity taking a year or more.
- Analyst David Gibson notes Nintendo uses Macronix as its main memory chip maker for physical game cartridges.
- Nintendo may rely on suppliers Rohm and Lapis Semiconductor for remaining ROM chips, which could raise cartridge production costs.
- Gibson notes digital software sales represented 61.5 percent of Nintendo's business in the second calendar quarter of 2026.
Macronix said in its third-quarter earnings report that production of ROM chips, the memory that stores game data on physical cartridges, has reached its end and that it will gradually decouple from the game industry, as reported by Taiwanese news site BigGo Finance and relayed by Ars Technica on November 4, 2026.
The shift matters for Nintendo because analyst David Gibson notes the console maker uses Macronix as its main memory chip maker for physical Switch and Switch 2 game cartridges. Macronix said ROM production has shrunk 39 percent in the last year and now represents just 5 percent of its business, crowded out by more lucrative NOR- and NAND-based memory and eMMCs.
Macronix said its production capacity is stuck at 25,000 12-inch wafers a month, and $1.2 billion in planned new capacity will take a year or more to start. Less profitable ROM chips are taking up wafer space that could earn more through other chip types, the company said.
Nintendo said last month that it had no plans to give up on game cartridges in the near future. But cartridges could get more expensive to produce as Nintendo relies on suppliers like Rohm and Lapis Semiconductor for remaining ROM chips, which could affect prices publishers charge for physical Switch cartridges.
Nintendo began charging more for some physical games than for the equivalent digital download earlier in 2026. Last year, Japanese publisher Inin only committed to a full Switch cartridge release for R-Type Dimensions III after it said two new smaller cartridge storage sizes for Nintendo Switch 2 lowered production costs.
Gibson notes digital software sales represented 61.5 percent of Nintendo's business in the second calendar quarter of 2026, up slightly from the year before. If that share keeps increasing, lower demand for ROM-based cartridges could balance out the cost effects in time.