One Of Nintendo’s Main Switch Game Card Chip Suppliers Reportedly Exiting The Business

For the past few months, the games industry has been grappling with publishers winding down production of physical games, with Nintendo introducing the Game-Key card in an attempt to find a middle ground.

Now, it seems Nintendo’s physical games production has been struck another blow, this time from outside the company. According to analyst David Gibson, Macronix, one of Nintendo’s longtime memory chip suppliers, has decided to quit making chips for the Switch and Switch 2. Macronix was specifically the main supplier of ROM chips for the Switch 1 game carts, and profits from these chips have been on a downward trend.

Nintendo’s main memory chip maker is quitting the Switch business Macronix, which makes the ROM chips in Switch 1 and Switch 2 game memory cards, is phasing out that business. There will be no new ROM products, and Q3 is the last quarter it reports ROM sales separately.

ROM fell to 5% of Macronix’s Q3 sales, from 26% a year ago (-39% YoY, +9% QoQ). The chairman says capacity is limited and is going to NOR and eMMC memory chips instead. None of its NT$37.8bn new capex goes to ROM, all of it to eMMC and NAND.

Macronix is not the only supplier of memory chips for Nintendo’s game cards, so true physical game releases for the Switch 2 are likely to continue for some time. That said, its not looking too good, and we can probably expect more publishers to opt for Game-Key cards in the future if the supply of memory chips dwindles further.

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