Immediately after Donald Trump announced his proposed tariffs that will go into effect this coming Saturday, April 5, and then a second wave on Wednesday, April 9, there was speculation across the video game industry as to how this would impact games.
So far, the sentiment is that these tariffs will have a huge impact on the video game industry, and the latest report from Game File reveals that the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) expects the tariffs to have "a real and detrimental impact on the video game industry."
Game File spoke to Aubrey Quinn, senior vice president at the ESA, who said that gaming hardware, for example, will be hit on multiple fronts, not just from the tariffs levied against countries like Vietnam, China, and Cambodia.
"Any one product that a consumer would buy is likely to be subject to many of the tariffs announced, all compounded on top of one another," said Quinn.
It was already speculated that the tariffs on Vietnam and Cambodia, in particular, could potentially impact the pricing of the Nintendo Switch 2, but Quinn's point is that there's more to gaming hardware that comes from other countries beyond Vietnam and Cambodia, which means that the base 10% tariff levied against all imports to the United States will only add on to the already high tariffs on specific countries.
Quinn did add, though, that the ESA remains "optimistic that there will be a solution that doesn’t damage U.S. industries, ours included, and doesn’t hurt U.S. consumers."
As we previously reported, Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad believes that Nintendo won't raise the price of its new console anytime soon, at least on the specific question of the pricing for the Nintendo Switch 2.
At the time of writing, we could still see things shift with these tariffs for the better, with the potential still remaining for a deal to be reached with exemptions for certain products, a lower tariff, or no tariffs at all being levied. Those deals, however, will take some time to set up with each impacted country, and in the meantime, we could still see the video game industry take a serious hit.
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