Macronix, a chip manufacturer, said in its third-quarter earnings report that its production of ROM chips "has reached its end" and that it will begin "gradually decoupling from the game industry," according to Taiwanese news site BigGo Finance. The report, as cited by Ars Technica, says the company's ROM output has fallen 39 percent over the past year and now makes up 5 percent of its business. Macronix attributes the decline to production being crowded out by more profitable NOR- and NAND-based memory and eMMC chips, given its capacity of 25,000 12-inch wafers a month.
Analyst David Gibson, as quoted in the report, describes Macronix as Nintendo's "main memory chip maker" for physical game cartridges. Nintendo said last month that it has no plans to abandon game cartridges in the near future. The report says the company will now depend more on suppliers such as Rohm and Lapis Semiconductor for its remaining ROM chips, which could raise production costs.
The report links these costs to cartridge prices but does not confirm any specific increase. It notes that Nintendo has already charged more for some physical games than for their digital versions earlier this year. It also says that Inin committed to a Switch cartridge release for R-Type Dimensions III after two smaller cartridge sizes for Switch 2 lowered production costs.
Gibson also points out that digital software made up 61.5 percent of Nintendo's business in the second calendar quarter of 2026, slightly up from a year earlier. The report suggests that if digital sales keep rising, lower demand for ROM cartridges could offset the higher costs over time.