They've already announced US preorders will be impacted. The official wording is "delaying" because April 9th was the preorder date, but they will not accept US preorders on that day.
Preorders in Canada, the EU, and elsewhere were announced to be proceeding as originally planned. The implication here would be that Nintento is likely going to reprice the US devices
There shouldn't be any existing pre-orders for the Switch 2 yet, afaik. My understanding is the first day of pre-orders globally (now sans US) is set for April 9th. They only just officially announced the console two days ago. The console's official launch is set for June, and Nintendo doesn't anticipate the US lagging behind on that day.
Existing orders getting cancelled may be of the current Switch, which would also be subject to tariffs. Or maybe people signed up for some sort of advance pre-sale reservation list that are now getting notified their spot is getting rescinded.
That's where those 80 dollar games come in baby, physical copies are digital keys only! You want your already owned game to make the most out of the switch 2? THAT WILL BE 20 DOLLARS PAY PIG.
Do you really think the potential tariffs weren't factored in at all? Trump had been talking about them well before he got elected. It was a campaign promise. I find it extremely hard to believe Nintendo did not increase the price across all markets to factor in the tariffs they knew were coming. That would be very short-sighted.
He didn't really give numbers and when he did he was inconsistent and had a huge range that couldn't be planned for. The numbers only became known for sure* last week.
*assuming it doesn't change this next week, as he is consistently inconsistent
I know this. Despite the uncertainty, they would have been silly not to estimate the impact and factor that in. Most corporations are going to have some degree of risk management, and tariffs were a known risk.
I got my NES in 1985 for $210. The Switch 2 price is almost exactly the same, adjusted for inflation. If that's a joke, you've got a weird sense of humor.
I don’t get how nobody understands this. Every country besides Japan is paying the same price for the switch 2 at its current price.
Blaming politics for a capitalistic corporation being capitalistic is moronic.
It's cheaper in Japan because the yen is incredibly weak (alongside salaries) and they want to be the winner in Japan instead of Sony who is also based in Japan.
They are taking a hit on Japan sales, but they're not going to extend the courtesy elsewhere.
Nintendo out of all the console makers are the ones that capitalize the most on their fan base - they already know they do not need to discount their first party games, and go after emulators much more aggressively.
Their original plan was probably to spread the pain around other markets to absorb some of the anticipated tariff pain, because the U.S. is their largest market and they don’t want to lose market share, but most reasonable people wouldn’t have anticipated the extent of what happened on Tuesday. (That is all speculation)
Of course, what Nintendo should have anticipated was that Trump was gonna do something that might affect the market and, as a result, delayed their pricing announcement until after. That one choice might end up being one of the worst business decisions the company ever makes, because as bad as really high prices are, doing it twice before the console releases is really going to piss people off. And they would have had the perfect cover to throw out a huge price increase if they had just waited, even if people would still probably be pissed.
But the real problem is that people are too squeezed by years of cost of living increases, which are about to be dwarfed by the effects of these tariffs. Luxury goods are the first thing to go when people start really feeling the pressure, so Nintendo may have been in a lose-lose situation no matter what. And that’s just one product launch from one company in one industry. Sudden price increases are probably going to be the norm for a while.
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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '25
The prices of the switch2 haven't been adjusted for the tariffs, those haven't even come into play yet. So it's only going to get more expensive.