Switch Cartridges Under Threat As Key ROM Manufacturer Exits Business

Macronix, one of Nintendo's key ROM manufacturers for physical game cartridges, is ceasing the production of ROM altogether.

This comes via analyst David Gibson who relayed the news from Macronix's latest financial release. According to the data, ROM products accounted for just 5% of the firm's overall revenue for Q3 2026, representing a stark decrease of 39% year-on-year.

It will now shift its focus over to NOR and eMMC memory chips instead, and will no longer report ROM sales separately in its future financial releases.

Gibson is keen to stress that Nintendo will have other partners to utilise when it comes to the production of cartridges, but this move may nevertheless accelerate the transition to digital game sales alongside Game-Key Cards.

Digital sales have already made up more than 60% of Nintendo's total sales during Q4 2026 and Q1 2027, but this tends to fluctuate based on major game releases.

It'll be interesting to see whether Nintendo itself addresses this development in its own financial release, which it due to drop this week on 5th November. Even if it doesn't acknowledge it in its own material, it seems likely that the question will arise in the company's usual Q&A session. We'll keep an eye out and relay its reaction and plans going forward.

For now, it's likely business as usual for Nintendo, but we'll be interested to see just how this affects the production of physical cartridges in the future and whether it will indeed accelerate the transition to digital.

Update: There are conflicting reports as to whether or not Macronix supplies ROM for Switch 2 specifically. For now, we've removed the mention of 'Switch 1 & 2' from the headline and will investigate further. We'll update this piece as soon as we're able to clarify.