It depends I think a lot on if the cartridge supplies stick to a fixed cost for the physical cartridges. If they say "nope" to that and want to increase prices on carts for Nintendo thus cutting into Nintendo's profit margin, then yeah I could see Nintendo themselves transitioning to GKC. AI data centers eating up all the memory/RAM storage probably hurts Nintendo enough on the hardware side by driving up prices there, I don't think they have any appetite to take smaller margins on cartridge releases. I think it's Macronix that makes the cartridges, they have to play ball with Nintendo on the carts, if they don't and start asking for more money per cart it's going to be a problem.
Macronix stock has skyrocketed since October too, much like other storage/memory suppliers, Macronix stock was about $27 a share October 2025, just a few months ago, now it's over $108 a share. That probably means unfortunately they going to start squeezing Nintendo for more money on those carts, supply is for memory/data/storage (ROM or RAM) is tight. These memory companies have gotten a taste of the "high life" with skyrocketing stock prices and that comes with the expectation of increased revenue and margins, and that generally means they start charging more for their products to maintain/increase that stock price.
Last edited by Soundwave - 1 day ago
