Rumor: Nintendo NX to Adopt Cartridges Instead of Optical Drive?

Here's a strange rumor: The Nintendo NX may not support optical drives, but instead don cartridges. This is according to the financial statements of a company that provides Nintendo's ROM chips.

Spotted by Screen Critics, Chinese memory manufacturer Macronix might be expecting an increased order of ROM chips from Nintendo. Macronix company chairman Wu Miin made a specific reference to the NX in a financial briefing:

"Macronix's ROM chips are usually supplied to videogame console maker Nintendo. Although the sales are 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."

Unless there is a slew of 3DS games coming out... more than average (which might be the case, but not that many games are planning to release this year for the 3DS), then this is pretty decent evidence that the NX will be going back to cartridges, which is a first since the debut of the GameCube, which donned disc drives.

Screen Critics suggests that Macronix began testing chips with a capacity of 32GB. This could be what Nintendo uses for its games. Then again, this is just a rumor, so as with all rumors, take it with a grain of salt.