President Donald Trump ran on a promise to lower prices, and he finally delivered on that promise on April 2, 2025 through the introduction of global tariff policies which dramatically lowered the value of many stocks. These new tariffs caused losses in the stock market that haven’t been seen since March 2020, and are causing a great deal of uncertainty for many companies that rely heavily on manufacturing in Asia. For example, Apple’s stock has seen a loss of almost 16% (so far) due to fears the tariffs will disrupt supply chains and drive up the price of consumer goods. The United States has placed tariffs on key manufacturing countries such as China (34% + 20%), Taiwan (32%) and Vietnam (46%).
Amid this uncertainty, Nintendo has delayed pre-orders in the United States for the recently announced Nintendo Switch 2. US pre-orders were initially planned to start on April 9 in anticipation of the June 5 launch date for the gaming device. However, Nintendo has postponed pre-orders until for the time being “in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.” It is highly likely that the price of the Nintendo Switch 2 (at 450 USD) will be increased in the United States to account for the added costs of tariffs. Pre-orders of the Nintendo Switch 2 in Canada and Europe will however commence as scheduled on April 9, and there is no indication that prices will be increasing in Canada.
It is likely that other video game console manufacturers and other companies in the consumer electronics space will also adjust their prices in the United States to account for these tariffs. Analysts believe that the prices of products such as iPhones can increase by 30-40%.
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Hi Alirod,
Thank you for posting this. I suppose I’ll just have to wait until I can save a bit more to justify the purchase.
It’s unfortunate that due to global geopolitics, the price of consoles and video games are most likely going to increase. I worry that such an increase may have long term ramifications, including the potential the re-emergence and proliferation of video game piracy. As we’ve already discussed in our presentation, video game piracy already is a real big issue, and by making video games and consoles much more unaffordable, those from the global north and global south will be more likely to pirate such games.
Hope we can see a return to more reasonable prices.