Passing on the costs Not just Switch 2: ESA warns Trumps tariffs will hurt the entire game industry "[It's] hard to imagine a world where tariffs like these dont impact pricing." Kyle Orland Apr 4, 2025 4:36 pm | 29 Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThis morning's announcement that Nintendo is delaying US preorders for the Switch 2 immediately increased the salience of President Trump's proposed wide-reaching import tariffs for millions of American Nintendo fans. Additionally, the Entertainment Software Associationa lobbying group that represents the game industry's interests in Washingtonis warning that the effects of Trump's tariffs on the gaming world won't stop with Nintendo."There are so many devices we play video games on," ESA senior vice president Aubrey Quinn said in an interview with IGN just as Nintendo's preorder delay news broke. "There are other consoles... 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 company-agnostic, this is an entire industry," she continued. "There's going to be an impact on the entire industry."While Trump's tariff proposal includes a 10 percent tax on imports from pretty much every country, it also includes a 46 percent tariff on Vietnam and a 54 percent total tariff on China, the two countries where most console hardware is produced. Quinn told IGN that it's "hard to imagine a world where tariffs like these dont impact pricing" for those consoles.More than that, though, Quinn warns that massive tariffs would tamp down overall consumer spending, which would have knock-on effects for game industry revenues, employment, and research and development investment."Video game consoles are sold under tight margins in order to reduce the barrier to entry for consumers," the ESA notes in its issue page on tariffs. "Tariffs mean that the additional costs would be passed along to consumers, resulting in a ripple effect of harm for the industry and the jobs it generates and supports.Not just a foreign problemThe negative impacts wouldn't be limited to foreign companies like Nintendo, Quinn warned, because "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."Some might argue that video game companies (and others) should simply bring more of their production costs within the US to avoid paying Trump's tariffs. But in an interview with Game File on Wednesday, Quinn noted that "supply chains are complicated and, certainly, supply chains dont change overnight. Everything that is considered or decided cant be a quick turnaround and cant be a knee-jerk reaction to any particular announcement."Last month, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella warned that proposed (and later largely delayed) 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexicowhere the vast majority of physical video games are producedcould lead to "a sharp downtick in the number of disc-based games that get released physically in the US." Replacing that Mexican disc production capacity with domestic alternatives would take "significant investment" in a market segment that is "now half what it was in 2021 and declining rapidly," Piscatella said.Making your voice heardLate last month, the ESA joined in a multi-industry letter to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer saying that "U.S. tariffs on imports of critical technology inputs and products would harm the very U.S. businesses the President seeks to boost and would risk undercutting long-term U.S. technology leadership." The letter urged Greer to "promote the global engagement with our trading partners" and to "use existing trade tools that strengthen trade relations with key markets for U.S. products and services" instead of tariffs.In 2020, the ESA partnered with the Consumer Technology Association to successfully argue for an exemption to tariffs then being imposed on China. Trump has recently signaled that similar industry-specific exemptions may be possible this time around as well.While Quinn told IGN that the ESA is meeting with employees at the White House and US Trade Representative's office, she said those talks are more likely to make an impact if "more members of government, elected officials, and their staff ... hear that their constituents are concerned."Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 29 Comments