Macronix, a Taiwanese chipmaker that supplies ROM for Nintendo’s Switch game cards, is gradually phasing out ROM production, chairman Miin Wu said on its October 27th earnings call, the Taipei Times reports. ROM fell to 5% of third-quarter sales from 26% a year earlier, the company’s filing shows.
David Gibson, a senior analyst at MST Financial, calls Macronix Nintendo’s main memory chip maker. He adds detail in an X post:
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.
The company’s own slides tie ROM to Nintendo’s consoles. They blamed limited game revenue on Switch 1’s final year in April 2025, and by that July they were citing the launch of a new platform.
ROM revenue fell 39% in a year, while total sales rose 195% to NT$24.2 billion (about $740M or Php 47 billion). So ROM’s share shrank mostly because the rest of the business took off.
Shipments lost their usual third-quarter jump, though. Measured by capacity shipped, with early 2019 as 100, ROM rose to 269 from 90 in last year’s third quarter. This year, it went to 114 from 100, against a peak of 545 in 2019.
Wu says capacity is limited and is going to NOR and eMMC memory chips instead, according to Gibson, who adds that none of Macronix’s NT$37.8 billion (about $1.15B or Php 73 billion) in new spending goes to ROM. Data centers are driving NOR demand, and the memory crunch makes that an easy call: gross margin hit a record 70.5% in the third quarter.
Nintendo’s half-year results on November 5th put digital at 59.8% of software sales from July to September, up from 51.2% a year earlier. They don’t mention Macronix or game cards.
Gibson says Macronix isn’t Nintendo’s only game card maker, so physical cards “will likely carry on for some time.” He expects digital to grow at the margin, through more Game-Key Cards and digital-only sales. As for Macronix, they are no doubt looking forward to more lucrative days of operation with this switch. Good for them, but not so great for normal people – gamers – like you.
