It’s been a wild 48-hour news cycle if you follow economics at all, and wilder still if you’re a Nintendo fan.
On Wednesday, we learned that the Nintendo Switch 2 would cost $450 in the United States, a painfully high price that analysts say was partly due to expectation of tariffs, and partly due to other factors like inflation, competition, and component costs.
Then, last night, the Trump Administration announced wide-reaching 10% tariffs on essentially every country, with much higher tariffs on numerous nations such as China, the EU, Japan, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and many, many others. In response, China announced this morning a 34% reciprocal tariff on all U.S. goods. And just hours ago, in the wake of all this, Nintendo announced it would be postponing Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders in the U.S. while it evaluated the impact of tariffs on its console plans.
It’s an unprecedented situation for everyone, both within and outside of gaming, and one that analysts, experts, and the general public are still trying to make sense of. Which is why just a short 30 minutes before Nintendo dropped its shocking pre-order news, I was on the phone with Aubrey Quinn, a spokesperson for the Entertainment Software Association, to discuss the impact these tariffs would have on the industry writ large.
The ESA, like everyone else, is still trying to figure out how all this is going to play out. Broadly, she says, they have some expectations. They knew tariffs of some sort were coming – both due to Trump’s past actions in his first administration and his repeated discussion of them on the campaign trail. And, once implemented, Quinn says they expected there would be risk of retaliation from other countries like China, as well as even more future tariffs and levies from the U.S. But the jury is still out on how this will ultimately play out.
What the ESA does feel confident saying, though, is that these tariffs will have a negative impact on video games:
“We really are, at this point, just watching and trying not to have knee-jerk reactions, because we don’t think that what President Trump announced this week is the end of the story, but what was announced this week and the tariffs as outlined, we do expect these tariffs will have a real and detrimental impact on the industry and the hundreds of millions of Americans who love to play games,” Quinn says. “And so our goal is to work with the administration, to work with other elected officials to try to find a solution that doesn’t damage U.S. industries, U.S. business, but also American gamers and families.”
When Quinn says there will be a detrimental impact, she doesn’t just mean the cost of systems, though she says it’s “hard to imagine a world where tariffs like these don’t impact pricing.” She says consumer spending will also be impacted, which will in turn impact company revenue. If companies see their profits drop, that will in turn impact jobs, as well as investment in research and development, and even what the next generation of consoles looks like. “The entire consumer ecosystem is connected,” she says.
So what’s the ESA doing about it? Well, a few things so far, but Quinn acknowledges it’s been difficult to get started. Even though the tariffs didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, she says the Trump Administration hasn’t been back in office for long – really just two months. Trump’s cabinet and administration is almost entirely made up of new people, too, so the ESA hasn’t been able to leverage relationships from his last term in office. And some of them were only appointed weeks ago.
“But yes, the short answer is we know who the conversations need to be happening with, and we are working on making connections and making sure that they understand that we are eager to work with them to find solutions that this is about public, private sector conversations happening, so we can understand and make sure that they see the impact and the risk of impact to business, to consumers, and really everything that’s happening within the US borders,” she concludes.
Quinn points to the recent news that the ESA had already joined a coalition of trade associations to reach out to U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer and express their concerns prior to the tariff news earlier this week. And they’re asking for meetings with a number of legislations and members of the administration to discuss similar topics.
Is it working, I ask? Are they being heard?
“Yes. I can tell you conversations are happening with… I don’t want to say every level,” she responds. “I’ve not met with Trump, right? So I don’t want to say every level of government, but certainly we’ve met with members of the administration. We’ve met with employees at the White House, we’ve met with employees at USTR [the office of the United States Trade Representative], so yes, we are having conversations and we’re also doing that in partnership with other associations to make sure that… This isn’t a video game issue. I represent the video game industry, so I’m very aware of the impact on the video game industry, the potential impact, but it’s not a video game industry. This is going to affect all consumer products from food to fashion to electronics.”
So what can consumers do about it if they’re concerned? Reach out to their representatives, Quinn responds. Write letters, call, send emails, tweets, whatever it looks like to let their elected leaders know they’re concerned. “I think the more members of government, elected officials, and their staff who hear that their constituents are concerned, the more likely we are to be heard and to potentially make an impact.”
Nintendo announced its hold on Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders due to the tariffs just minutes after our conversation had concluded. When I reached out to Quinn for further comment on that, she said the ESA doesn’t comment on what individual companies will do. But I did mention the Nintendo Switch 2’s already-high pricing at the end of our conversation, and Quinn had this to say:
“You know what? It’s been interesting with media coverage around video games and tariffs because just unfortunate coincidental timing that the Switch [2 reveal] was the same day as President Trump’s announcement. There are so many devices we play video games on. There are other consoles, but as I was saying, VR headsets, our smartphones, people who love PC games, if we think it’s just the Switch, then we aren’t taking it seriously. This is going to have an impact.
“And even American-based companies, they’re getting products that need to cross into American borders to make those consoles, to make those games. And so there’s going to be a real impact regardless of company. This is company-agnostic, this is an entire industry. There’s going to be an impact on the entire industry.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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