This is potentially terrible news for those who love physical media.
Nintendo’s main Switch cartridges has plans to abandon the ROM portion of its business, according to reporting by the Taipei Times. The Taiwanese semiconductor and memory manufacturer Macronix is phasing out its ROM production, which was confirmed by CEO Miin Wu. This could spell bad news for gamers who love physical media.
Macronix just announced a record-high net profit of $337 million for Q3 2026, but Wu says many of its new customers have issued a “demand for NOR used in data centers.” NOR is a type of flash memory.
https://x.com/gibbogame/status/2117805196130582970
The company’s ROM business has actually declined by 39 percent over the past year. This section of Macronix now accounts for just five percent of sales, down from 26 percent this time last year. In other words, the financials just aren’t there.
There is a silver lining here. Macronix may be Nintendo’s main supplier of ROM for its cartridges, but it’s far from the only entity helping to create physical Switch cartridges. Also, this doesn’t impact Switch 2 cartridges in quite the same way. That’s because the Switch 2 carts use NAND flash memory, a market segment that Macronix isn’t phasing out.
https://x.com/Genki_JPN/status/2052587530835591595
However, this doesn’t look too good for the long-term sustainability of physical game cartridges and discs. Digital products already account for 61.5 percent of Nintendo’s software sales. This is even starker when you look at the other console manufacturers. Digital downloads make up around 85 percent of software sales on the PS5, which could account for Sony’s recent move to end physical media sales altogether.
Both of the above numbers pale in comparison to Microsoft and its Xbox division. A whopping 96 percent of software sales are digital on Xbox platforms. The company has still yet to announce a plan to sunset physical media.
