No word on the situation north of the 49th.
United States consumers will not be able to preorder the Switch 2 as planned on Wednesday.
In a statement to GameSpot, Nintendo of America has confirmed the following: "Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged."
A few hours after the Switch 2 Direct on Wednesday, the US government issued a series of "reciprocal tariffs" on countries, with specific targeting of Japan and other Asian nations that are part of Nintendo's supply chain.
As much as I hate it as a physical game buyer, I think they have to price digital and physical games differently. Most of the outrage about the price has been over the game prices. Tariffs don't affect digital sales. Make the digital versions lower and at least a customer only has to deal with a high price for the hardware.
I assumed the high Switch 2 price was in anticipation of tariffs. So even if it was, did they underestimate what they would be?
Won't this also impact the MSRP on Playstation and XBox consoles? Does a company like Microsoft have more influence here or does that even matter?
As for the games... honestly I have no answer for that. Physical games will get hit hard if these tariffs stand. And there's no wiggle room as to what goes in the box. So... maybe the solution is to go *SIGH* all digital, which makes me cry as a person who prefers physical copies, but it's the only way I can see to mitigate these painfully high prices.
Won't this also impact the MSRP on Playstation and XBox consoles? Does a company like Microsoft have more influence here or does that even matter?
If these tariffs stay EVERYTHING is going up. There's a reason the stock market is literally imploding right now. Nintendo was just the first one to be unlucky and announce a new product literally on the same day the tariffs were announced. No company is eating an extra 30-50% tax that wasn't on their products before.
Do you think the Switch 1 price will go up? Nintendo has avoided a price drop the entire time so you figure they already have quite a bit of wiggle room there. Could their equivalent of a Switch 1 price drop simply be that the price stays the same? And if it does stay the same while everything else goes up in price I wonder if the Switch 1 will have longer legs than originally expected by being the most affordable option.
Nintendo of Canada just announced that Canadian pre-orders are being delayed as well. Not that I was going to get a Switch 2 at launch anyway but it sure sucks that our country, for which the tariffs do not apply, is also having its pre-order delayed.
So does the price go up for us too? It's already $700 for the Mario Kart bundle! I see pre-orders for games that are $100. They go even higher and they might as well not release the damn thing in Canada.
Nintendo of Canada just announced that Canadian pre-orders are being delayed as well. Not that I was going to get a Switch 2 at launch anyway but it sure sucks that our country, for which the tariffs do not apply, is also having its pre-order delayed.
So does the price go up for us too? It's already $700 for the Mario Kart bundle! I see pre-orders for games that are $100. They go even higher and they might as well not release the damn thing in Canada.
I feel for Canada after all that Canada has done in the semi recent fires in LA is being punished by a man who has no clue what he is doing and is taking account emotions and how he was wrong to affect the US allies.
In the past gens were the prices of games lower or higher than US prices Ian?
