AI memory boom claims another victim as major Nintendo Switch cartridge chip supplier exits ROM business
MST Financial analyst David Gibson posted about the change on X after digging through the company's latest quarterly report. Macronix won't develop any new ROM products from here on. The latest quarter is also the last in which Macronix will report ROM sales separately. Those sales made up just 5%... Read Entire Article
Taiwanese chipmaker Macronix, a key supplier of the ROM in Nintendo Switch game cartridges, is winding down its ROM business to focus on flash memory for AI data centers. Macronix's latest quarterly report shows that ROM sales made up just 5% of revenue, down from 26% a year earlier. The company now generates nearly all of its revenue from NAND and NOR flash memory, with NOR being particularly hard to come by due to high demand from AI servers.
Macronix's chairman, Miin Wu, stated that data center customers are chasing the company for more capacity. For Nintendo, the impact seems manageable as Rohm group companies also produce ROM for its game cards. Analyst David Gibson expects the move to nudge more games toward digital distribution, with downloads already accounting for around 60% of Nintendo's software sales.
However, a Nintendo executive recently stated that there are no plans to abandon physical cartridges for the Switch 2. Meanwhile, Nintendo reported a 41% year-over-year decline in Switch 2 sales to 2.67 million units, likely due to rising memory costs.
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