With Nintendo Switch 2 preorders delayed, tariffs are complicating gaming’s biggest launch in years

As a result, Nintendo said in a statement to Modern Retail on Friday that preorders would no longer begin on April 9 as originally planned, “in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.”

The Nintendo Switch 2 is set to be one of gaming’s biggest launches in years; the original Nintendo Switch has sold more than 150 million units. It was also going to be a big moment for retailers like Best Buy and GameStop. Best Buy has said that its stores will open at midnight on June 5 for the launch, and an executive said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in March that it was already making changes to its stores to prepare for the launch.

Now, tariffs threaten to disrupt the launch, at a time when retailers are desperate for moments that will drum up consumer excitement. Nintendo said that it will update the timing at a later date and that the launch date of June 5 is unchanged. It also has not yet said whether it will raise the suggested retail price of about $450 in the U.S. And, it remains to be seen how the initial decision to delay the preorders will impact consumer confidence.

“I think everyone’s in the same space, which is trying to get their heads around those announcements the other day about the breadth and depth of tariffs,” said Mat Piscatella, a video game industry analyst for Circana who previously worked in business planning and analysis roles at publishers Warner Bros Games and Activision Blizzard.

Piscatella added, “I’d imagine Nintendo had some base assumption of what the tariffs might look like and did the math accordingly, and now that calculus has changed. … I think everybody’s going back and having to look at what their U.S. pricing is going to be based on their supply chain.”

How tariffs will impact manufacturers and retailers

Joost van Dreunen, CEO and co-founder of interactive-entertainment data firm Aldora, said Nintendo is likely delaying U.S. preorders to find its footing and potentially increase the price, adding that new consoles are already often sold at a loss to boost the install base and recoup profit from software sales.

Van Dreunen, who is also a gaming strategy and economics professor at the New York University Stern School of Business, said the company could also be looking to delay shipping additional units to the U.S. and limit the number of devices sold at each store per month.

Hundreds of thousands of consoles have already been shipped from Vietnam to the U.S., according to the Financial Times, so the company could focus on selling those units and wait to bring more in.

“I could see them sort of parse it out or ration it, … to best manage demand and their ability to supply and their ability to run a profit on it,” he said.

In 2019, Nintendo, along with competitors Sony and Microsoft, had warned the previous Trump administration that a proposed 25% import tax on China would significantly disrupt their businesses and add significant costs to game consoles, decreasing sales. They also said it would cause significant disruption to shift sourcing entirely to the U.S. or another country.

Nintendo’s price for the new console is $150 more than the original Switch, and in Japan, the company is selling a Japanese-language version of the console for the equivalent of $340. To van Dreunen, that signals Nintendo took a lesson from the first administration, instituting what he called a “Trump tax” to avoid going back and forth on price points in response to tariffs. “The way I read it is that Nintendo had very clearly learned during the first Trump administration that tariffs would be likely and quite impactful for them as a company,” he said.

Manufacturers from Apple to Samsung to LG are heavily dependent on foreign manufacturing, given the complexities of the electronics industry. Best Buy previously said 60% of the cost of its sold goods flows through China and warned in February that tariffs would likely lead to price increases.

“It’s been interesting with media coverage around video games and tariffs because it was just unfortunate coincidental timing that the Switch [2 reveal] was the same day as President Trump’s announcement,” Entertainment Software Association spokesperson Aubrey Quinn told IGN in an article published this morning. “There are so many devices we play video games on. … If we think it’s just the Switch, then we aren’t taking it seriously. This is going to have an impact.”

Higher prices threaten video game sales

Some gamers online had already expressed frustration with the pricing, begging Nintendo to “drop the price” in comments on one of the company’s latest livestreams. In addition to the console’s much higher price, compared to the original Switch, each game runs as much as $10-$20 more than the previous console’s typical $60 game price. The Nintendo Switch 2 will have a bigger screen, more powerful hardware and other new features.

“Now you’ve got all these angry people during what should be a really exciting launch of a cool new product,” van Dreunen said. “It creates this friction that’s not necessarily good for the business of Nintendo, although I’m sure they’ll recover just fine and they can make this work. It just feels unnecessary and unfair.”

This is the first major console release since holiday 2020, when the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles launched. Piscatella said the Nintendo Switch 2 and Grand Theft Auto 6 were the two products the market looked to drive especially high growth in the segment this year.

“This is certainly a big wrench into that, and we’ll have to see what the impact is,” Piscatella said. “We’re going to have to see how [customers] react to some potentially really significant price increases across everything they buy.”

Piscatella said he’s less worried about the first year of sales, as he believes there are enough enthusiasts and more affluent customers to take whatever units are made available in the U.S. in the short term.

“It’s year two where that price sensitivity really starts to come into play,” he said. “But we don’t know what’s going to happen in nine hours, let alone nine months.”