On Friday, Nintendo announced that players won’t be able to pre-order a Switch 2 on April 9. The company directly blamed President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs against basically every country on the planet (except Russia and North Korea, weirdly) for the delay. This has led to some people and analysts online to predict a price increase on the $450 console.
This was explained in a statement from Nintendo, first obtained by GameSpot:
Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.
To be clear: The Switch 2 is currently still priced at $450 and is still set to launch in June. None of that has changed. For now. However, with this news and the ongoing backlash from players over game prices, I’d say a lot of the Switch 2’s rollout and pricing is up in the air. Perhaps Trump does what he has done in the past and at the last minute delays some or all of the huge tariffs. Maybe they get doubled in some places out of spite. Maybe he declares video games illegal with an executive order. Folks, anything is possible right now.
It’s very rare that a major video game company like Nintendo would backpedal this quickly after announcing a date for pre-orders. Even weirder for Nintendo of all companies to directly tie its decision to President Trump by calling out his planned tariffs. But we are living in wild and unprecedented times, something I’m remined of every single time I check social media or the news. As you might expect during such a bizarre moment, a lot of people online reacted to the Switch 2 news.
Here are some of the more entertaining reactions, to distract you for just a few minutes from…everything.
