Tech
Nintendo is losing a Switch cartridge supplier
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Published 11/4/2026 11:03:32 AM
Nintendo is losing a Switch cartridge supplier
Nintendo ROM supplier Macronix is leaving the business as demand for its data center memory booms.
Nintendo ROM supplier Macronix is leaving the business as demand for its data center memory booms.
Nintendo is about to lose a major memory supplier for its Switch cartridges. The supplier, Macronix, announced during a recent quarterly earnings call that it would be gradually phasing out ROM production and is instead focusing on NOR flash memory for data centers, Taipei Times reports.
Macronix’s ROM revenue fell 39 percent compared with last year in Q3 2026, but its revenue from NOR memory rose 158 percent, and its revenue from NAND memory surged 768 percent year over year. According to Taipei Times, Macronix chairman and CEO Miin Wu said during its Q3 2026 earnings call that “demand for NOR used in data centers is very robust. Customers are chasing us for more capacity, demanding that we deliver more NOR flash solutions for data centers.” The company also reportedly “expects chip price hikes to persist.”
Although Sony has announced a plan to stop production of physical game discs starting in January 2028, Nintendo remains committed to physical games, saying recently that it has “no plans” to ditch them. Physical games also remain a bigger portion of Nintendo’s sales than other gaming companies; Nintendo said in August that physical titles accounted for 38.5 percent of its games sales, which is higher than companies like Capcom.
Macronix’s exit from the ROM business comes nearly a year after Micron shut down Crucial, its consumer RAM and SSD brand, to turn its attention to meeting AI data center demand.
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Sony might push the debut of its next-generation console back to 2029 due to AI memory demands.
Sony might push the debut of its next-generation console back to 2029 due to AI memory demands.
Sony and Nintendo are reportedly feeling squeezed by RAM shortages as demand from AI data centers takes up an increasing share of memory chip production. In response to rising costs and dwindling chip supplies, Sony is considering pushing back the release of its next PlayStation console “to 2028 or even 2029,” according to industry sources cited by Bloomberg, while Nintendo may increase the $450 price of its Switch 2 console this year.
That delay would be a considerable divergence from Sony’s usual release schedule, having launched a new console generation every six to seven years since the original PlayStation debuted in 1994. As the current PlayStation 5 console was released in November 2020, it would have been expected to launch before the end of 2027.
The memory shortages are also a blow for Nintendo, which pointedly did not increase the Switch 2 launch price last year despite Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Bloomberg offers no specifics for how much the price might increase. We have reached out to Sony and Nintendo for comment.
