Yet today’s announcement suggests that Nintendo might need to “assess” whether even a $450 price is feasible given the additional taxes the company will now have to pay to import systems manufactured in countries like China and Vietnam into the United States. Alternatively, Nintendo could eat the cost of any tariffs and sell its console hardware at a loss, as it has in the past, in an attempt to make that money back in software sales.
Gamers, learn Japanese to save $133! https://t.co/misNmSstIf
— Duolingo (@duolingo) April 3, 2025
Nintendo has already announced that its domestic Japanese market will be getting a special version of the Switch 2 retailing for just ¥49,980 (about $343). But that low-cost alternative to the “international” edition will have “only Japanese… available as the system language” in an attempt to prevent international scalpers and resellers from profiting off of the historically weak Japanese yen. That strange, language-based soft region lock, which seems only tangentially related to recent US tariff concerns, prompted DuoLingo’s social media team to joke that gamers can “learn Japanese to save $133!”
Stock markets worldwide have seen massive drops in the less than two days since the announcement of Trump’s tariff plans and the announcement of retaliatory tariffs from countries like China. As of this writing, Nintendo’s Japanese stock is down roughly eight percent since the Wednesday morning Switch 2 announcement, falling well below its recent average price.
