In some rather depressing news this morning, it appears as if longtime Nintendo hardware partner Macronix will be exiting the ROM business soon. The news comes from industry analyst David Gibson, who posted on Twitter that, “There will be no new ROM products, and Q3 is the last quarter it reports ROM sales separately.” Reportedly announced during Macronix’s latest earnings call, Eurogamer reports that ROM products make up around 5% of Macronix’s total business. Essentially, the company won’t lose much by dissolving that side of its manufacturing.
This news doesn’t signal the end of cartridge production as we know it, however. There are still other business partners that work with Nintendo to create physical games. The knock-on effect, though, could see the prices of physical editions go up as the remaining manufacturers vie for an even more limited supply of ROM chips. Gibson even suggests that Macronix exiting might push more publishers to utilize Game-Key Cards, which don’t require ROM chips at all.
Ultimately, it will probably be a losing battle Nintendo faces in the coming years when sticking with physical games. While the most likely culprit for this is the AI bubble that is robbing the world of RAM, ROM, and CPU components, it doesn’t help when a major ROM manufacturer up and leaves the business entirely. I imagine Nintendo will hold out for as long as it possibly can, but we may wind up in a scenario where Game-Key Cards are the only viable method of physical game production.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
