The financial statements of the company that provides Nintendo's ROM chips - used in both consoles and for 3DS game cartridges - have sparked speculation as to whether the upcoming
Nintendo NX will drop the use of optical disc drives in favour of cartridges.
As spotted by
Screen Critics, Chinese memory manufacturer Macronix is reportedly expecting an increased order of ROM chips from Nintendo, and company chairman Wu Miin made specific reference to the NX in his financial briefing (reported by
Money-Link and translated by NeoGAF user
Jim_Cacher):
"Macronix’s ROM chips are usually supplied to videogame console maker, Nintendo. Although the sales is in off season during the first quarter, the revenue is similar compared with the same period last year. Wu Miin suggested that as Nintendo had just announced it will release a new generation console in March next year, and the console will be launched at the same time in Japan, America and Europe, so ROM’s sales is expected to increase in the latter half of this year, and it will have a large growth potential.”
An increased need for ROM chips above and beyond the usual level required for 3DS game production has been touted by some as possible evidence of a return to cartridge-based game delivery for Nintendo. Cartridges were dropped for the GameCube, and all subsequent consoles used disc drives.
The high-speed nature of cartridges could obviate the need for PS4-style game installations and, if the rumours of the NX being a handheld/home console hybrid are true, the lack of an optical disc drive would make the console far more portable.
There are mitigating factors here - the NX could very well just include internal ROM chips, leading to that increased demand (although some have questioned whether the potential size and quality of Macronix's latest chips would be required for an internal component).
Screen Critics also reports that Macronix recently began testing chips with a capacity of 32GB, and that these could be what Nintendo plans to purchase. Given that Xbox One and PS4 both use 50GB capacity Blu-Ray discs, and many games exceed even that, forcing extra features to be downloaded, there's some question as to whether Nintendo would adopt a format that reduced the need for installs, but still required it for many modern games.
There's a chance that all of this is moot - last year, Nintendo filed
a patent for a console with no disc drive, but emphasised the use of downloads to a hard drive for game distribution. Even
that'
s being used as evidence of cartridges by some, however, as the patent also includes a "read/write card slot"
This should all be cleared up soon enough - Nintendo has announced that
the NX will launch globally in March 2017, although we won't see it at E3.
