U.S. President Donald Trump provided an update on potential tariffs he plans to impose on imports from various countries to the US this week. The good news is that the pause he announced has been extended until Jul 02, 2025. The bad news, at least for gamers, is the 25 percent tariff he plans to impose on products being shipped from Japan to the US.
If Trump follows through with the plan to impose a 25 percent tariff on imports from Japan, then we may well be headed for a very near future where physicalNintendogames, both on theSwitchand theSwitch 2, could end up costing even more than they already do. A significant shock to the system for those of us with a Switch 2 who are still trying to shake offthe $80 Mario Kart World bombshell.
Increasing the cost of $60 OG Switch games that haven’t dropped in price for eight years also feels like a very Nintendo thing to do.
The silver lining is despite Nintendo being a Japanese company, its consoles are not made in Japan. That means no risk of the Switch 2’s price being altered due to the incoming 25 percent tariff. I can’t promise that means no price increase for the console ever, of course, especially with a tariff on Vietnamese imports already agreed. The bulk of Switch 2 consoles are manufactured in Vietnam.
Nintendo Switch game cards are made in Japan
Hence why US tariffs might be about to make Switch 2 games a lot more expensive
That’s not the case for the Switch and Switch 2’s game cards, though. Most of those are made in Japan, as outlined by Serentiy Forge CEO Zhenghua Yang on Reddit a few months ago. Someone raised the issue of Nintendo games getting more expensive when tariff talk first kicked off a few months ago, and the CEO stepped in to confirm that yes, Nintendo’s game cartridges are manufactured in Japan and then shipped around the world.
“The cards are manufactured in Japan. However, depending on your region, basically everything else besides the cards are manufactured elsewhere,” Yang explained. The “everything else” includes the case, the packaging, and any items you might get from a collector’s edition or through pre-order bonuses, so no risk of the price ofDonkey Kong Bananzabeing driven upby that weird bongo plush with a banana slot.
Yang signs off by noting that, even five months ago when all these tariff issues first became prevalent, Serentiy Forge needed to restructure its manufacturing pipeline for physical Switch games. Now that a potential 25 percent on Japanese imports is looming large, studios that make physical Switch and Switch 2 games, including Nintendo itself, might need to make some difficult decisions. Whether to eat the increased costs themselves, or to pass on the tariff cost to the consumers by making their games more expensive.
