If you aren’t aware, while there are a long number of different, diverse video games on the market, spanning all sorts of genres, everything is getting expensive in the video game industry. One of the biggest reasons of the change is due to the Trump administration’s tariffs, which caused Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo to increase pricing for hardware and accessories. In a new interview with Kyoto Shimbun, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa talked about how they are monitoring the current market with the ongoing tariffs and the increase in memory prices and its impact on the industry.
“Hardware profitability depends on factors like component procurement conditions, cost reductions through mass production, and the impact of exchange rates and tariffs,” Furukawa said (via machine translation). “It’s difficult to generalize. Fundamentally, we aim to address this by advancing component procurement over the medium to long term.”
Furukawa notes that the increasing cost of RAM, which is mainly due to AI data centers buying up huge quantities of it, could become an issue if things continue.
“We procure from suppliers based on our medium- to long-term business plans, but the current memory market is very volatile,” he explained. “There is no immediate impact on earnings, but it is something we must monitor closely.”
Talking about the impact that the high tariffs are having at the company, Furukawa said:
“While it’s difficult to accurately gauge the future impact, our basic policy is to recognize tariffs as a cost and pass them on to prices as much as possible, not just in the U.S.,” he said.
“On the other hand, this is a crucial period for our game business as we promote the adoption of new hardware and maintain the momentum of our platforms. We are working on this while carefully considering the situation.”
Furukawa provided no comment as to whether or not prices will increase depending on procurement costs, saying that it was hypothetical.