Nintendo’s biggest ROM chip supplier is bowing out of the business

For years, the AI industry’s insatiable demand for memory and storage has had plenty of knock-on effects on the price and availability of PC components like RAM, SSDs, and GPUs. Now those shortages are also squeezing the supply of ROM chips that power physical Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 game cartridges.

多年来，人工智能行业对内存和存储的贪婪需求，对内存（RAM）、固态硬盘（SSD）和图形处理器（GPU）等个人电脑组件的价格和供应产生了诸多连锁反应。如今，这些短缺也正在挤压为任天堂 Switch 和 Switch 2 实体游戏卡带提供支持的只读存储器（ROM）芯片的供应。

Chip manufacturer Macronix announced in its third-quarter earnings report that the company’s production of ROM chips “has reached its end” and that it will begin “gradually decoupling from the game industry,” as reported by Taiwanese news site BigGo Finance. That could be an issue for Nintendo, which analyst David Gibson notes uses Macronix as its “main memory chip maker” for physical game cartridges.

据台湾新闻网站 BigGo Finance 报道，芯片制造商旺宏电子（Macronix）在第三季度财报中宣布，该公司的 ROM 芯片生产“已走到尽头”，并将开始“逐步与游戏行业脱钩”。这对任天堂来说可能是一个问题，分析师大卫·吉布森（David Gibson）指出，旺宏电子是任天堂实体游戏卡带的“主要内存芯片制造商”。

That ROM production—which has shrunk 39 percent in the last year and now represents just 5 percent of Macronix’s business—is being crowded out by production of more lucrative, in-demand chips like NOR- and NAND-based memory and eMMCs, the company said. With Macronix’s production capacity stuck at 25,000 12-inch wafers a month—and $1.2 billion in planned new capacity taking a year or more to spin up—less profitable ROM chips are taking up wafer space that can earn more through other types of chips.

该公司表示，ROM 生产在过去一年中缩减了 39%，目前仅占旺宏电子业务的 5%，正被 NOR 和 NAND 闪存以及 eMMC 等利润更高、需求更大的芯片生产所挤压。由于旺宏电子的产能被限制在每月 2.5 万片 12 英寸晶圆，且计划投入 12 亿美元的新产能需要一年或更长时间才能投产，利润较低的 ROM 芯片占用了本可以通过其他类型芯片赚取更多收益的晶圆空间。

This doesn’t mean Nintendo will follow Sony into a world without physical game production. On the contrary, the Switch maker said last month that it had no plans to give up on the game cartridges in the near future. But those cartridges could get more expensive to produce as Nintendo is forced to rely on suppliers like Rohm and Lapis Semiconductor for its remaining ROM chips.

这并不意味着任天堂会追随索尼，进入一个没有实体游戏生产的世界。相反，这家 Switch 制造商上个月表示，近期没有放弃游戏卡带的计划。但随着任天堂被迫依赖罗姆（Rohm）和蓝碧石半导体（Lapis Semiconductor）等供应商来获取剩余的 ROM 芯片，这些卡带的生产成本可能会变得更高。

That could have a knock-on effect on the prices publishers charge for physical Switch cartridges, too. Earlier this year, Nintendo started charging more for some physical games than for the equivalent digital download. And last year, Japanese publisher Inin only committed to a full Switch cartridge release for R-Type Dimensions III after it said “two new smaller cartridge [storage capacity] sizes for Nintendo Switch 2” lowered the cost of producing those carts.

这也可能对发行商收取的 Switch 实体卡带价格产生连锁反应。今年早些时候，任天堂开始对部分实体游戏收取比同款数字下载版更高的费用。去年，日本发行商 Inin 在表示“任天堂 Switch 2 的两种新的更小（存储容量）卡带尺寸”降低了生产成本后，才承诺为《R-Type Dimensions III》发行完整的 Switch 卡带版。

On the other hand, Gibson notes that digital software sales represented 61.5 percent of Nintendo’s business in the second calendar quarter of 2026, up slightly from the year before. If that number keeps increasing, lower demand for ROM-based Nintendo cartridges could end up balancing out the costs involved in due time.

另一方面，吉布森指出，在 2026 年第二日历季度，数字软件销售额占任天堂业务的 61.5%，较上年同期略有增长。如果这一数字持续上升，对基于 ROM 的任天堂卡带的需求下降最终可能会在适当的时候抵消相关成本。