Is the Nintendo Switch 2 getting announced today? Later this week? Before or after the company’s next financial meeting this coming November?
We don’t have anything to report on that in this article, but we think you’ll want to know what Nintendo’s business partners are telling their investors.
Macronix should probably be the kind of Taiwanese tech company that the public by and large don’t know about. They make memory chips for bigger companies like Samsung and Nintendo. They don’t make the phones or game consoles that consumers know by heart and love.
But Macronix is well known by the most online Nintendo fans, and for good reason. They make the ROM chips found in the 3DS and Switch game cartridges, and that means they have key access to information from Nintendo themselves.
As a result, fans have been following Macronix for years for news about upcoming Nintendo products. Nintendo fans scrutinized every news about Macronix in the hype cycle around the original Switch, and we’re just back at it again.
As shared on ResetEra by user Rösti, Macronix just released their Q3 2024 financial report. The company includes a webcast and copies of the slide presentation they showed their shareholders.
Rösti found two of those slides seem to be alluding to the Switch 2, without referring to it by name of course.
In one slide, labeled Key Agenda, it says that “ROM Declines due to Customers’ Anticipation for New Platform.” Just to provide context, ROM here does not refer to the data found in a video game cartridge that some people play on emulators.
These are the ROM chips we mentioned above, that Macronix is now manufacturing for the Nintendo Switch. So Macronix is telling their shareholders that sales of Switch game cartridges are down. They’re also telling those shareholders that it’s because their ‘customers’ are waiting on the new platform.
Subsequently, in a slide labeled Business Update – ROM, they have this line:
“Customers are supposing that a new platform will be released in upcoming quarters.”
This accompanies a table that shows how Switch carts have been selling in the past few quarters. And it does show that cartridges peaked in Q2 2023, and saw a precipitous slide with each succeeding quarter, right until it rallied in this most recent quarter.
Now what’s interesting is Macronix’s slides aren’t clear on who they are referring to as their ‘customers.’ Ostensibly, we may think that means us gamers, who buy the Switch game cartridges. But could Macronix be actually referring to Nintendo as their customer, since they ordered the cartridges to be made?
However they mean it, they are sending a huge message that even a casual gamer can understand. Nintendo’s business partners are now telling their investors about the Switch 2.
Macronix is not telling those investors about this because they think those investors are Nintendo fans who will be excited to buy a new console. This is about Macronix’s business, and Macronix is telling those investors they can expect business to pick up very soon.
We don’t have a release date, or even the date for the announcement here. But we can add this tidbit to the increasing pile of rumors and news indicating the imminent arrival of the Switch 2.
Other game companies are hoping that the Switch 2 can revive business for them, so it’s no surprise that their production partners are saying the same thing. These are all the reasons that Nintendo needs to be careful with their Switch 2 announcement.
With all that said, Nintendo can’t keep all of us, consumers, gaming companies, business partners, waiting forever.
