Today’s statement that Nintendo is postponing United States preorders for the Switch 2 right away increased the salience of President Trump’s proposed far-flung import tariffs for countless American Nintendo fans. In addition, the Entertainment Software Association– a lobbying group that represents the video game market’s interests in Washington– is cautioning that the results of Trump’s tariffs on the video gaming world will not stop with Nintendo.

“There are so many devices we play video games on,” ESA senior vice president Aubrey Quinn stated in an interview with IGN simply as Nintendo’s preorder hold-up news broke. “There are other consoles … VR headsets, our mobile phones, individuals who enjoy PC video games; if we believe it’s simply 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 proposition consists of a 10 percent tax on imports from practically every nation, it likewise consists of a 46 percent tariff on Vietnam and a 54 percent overall tariff on China, the 2 nations where most console hardware is produced. Quinn informed IGN that it’s “hard to imagine a world where tariffs like these don’t impact pricing” for those consoles.

More than that, however, Quinn alerts that huge tariffs would tamp down total customer costs, which would have ripple effects for video game market profits, work, and research study and advancement financial investment.

“Video game consoles are sold under tight margins in order to reduce the barrier to entry for consumers,” the ESA notes in its problem page on tariffs. “Tariffs suggest that the extra expenses would be passed along to customers, leading to a causal sequence of damage for the market and the tasks it creates and supports.

Not simply a foreign issue

The unfavorable effects would not be restricted to foreign business like Nintendo, Quinn alerted, since “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.”