Nintendo worried tariffs will hit Switch 2 as ‘people have less money to spend on games’

Unlike
Sony
and
Microsoft
,
Nintendo
has explicitly commented on how
Donald Trump
’s tariffs could affect the launch of
Switch 2
.

Although it’s quite obvious what has spurred Sony and Microsoft to raise the prices of their consoles –
the new tariffs
imposed by US president Donald Trump – neither company has admitted the fact and have instead tried to tiptoe around the issue.

Sony blamed ‘high inflation and fluctuating exchange rates’ for the PlayStation 5’s
second price hike
(which has only affected the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand), while
Microsoft said
unfavourable ‘market conditions’ and increased development costs were why Xbox hardware and games would be more expensive going forward.

Nintendo, however, has been more forthcoming about how the tariffs could affect its business, going as far to say that its profits could see an ‘impact of tens of billions of yen.’

For context, 10 billion yen is just over £50 million and that’s just the minimum of how much Nintendo fears it could lose.

This comes straight from Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa, as part of the company’s financial results for the 2025 fiscal year (April 2024 to March 2025).

According to
Japanese outlet Yomiuri Shimbun
(as translated by
IGN
), Furukawa explicitly pointed to the tariffs as one of the ‘corresponding hurdles’ that could have a serious impact on Nintendo’s profits, especially with its new console, the Nintendo Switch 2, launching this year.

‘If prices of daily necessities like food increase [because of the tariffs] then people will have less money to spend on game consoles,’ said Furukawa.

He also acknowledged that any price increase for the Switch 2, in response to the tariffs, would only risk ‘decreasing sales.’ It’s unclear, though, if any price hike would apply worldwide or just for the US.

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