Nintendo delays Switch 2 pre-orders in the US due to Trump tariffs

Nintendo has said it won’t start Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders in the US yet so that it can assess market conditions.

Pre-orders for Nintendo‘s new console went live in Europe and the UK this week, following the firm’s Nintendo Direct presentation. Now, Nintendo has said that it won’t open pre-orders to customers in the US yet due to the country’s turbulent financial situation.

“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 said in a statement to GameSpot.

“Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.”

US President Donald Trump has been imposing tariffs on numerous countries in recent weeks, including a sizeable tariff on China, where tech products are often manufactured.

On Wednesday, he also introduced a blanket 10% tariff on all imports, with countries like China and Japan – what Trump calls “the worst offenders” – getting larger tariffs of 54% and 24%, respectively.

A report from the Financial Times last month suggested that Nintendo had already been shifting production away from China since Trump’s first administration stated its intent to upend global trading, noting that more than half of the hardware Nintendo imports into the US comes from Vietnam and Cambodia.

However, the tariffs imposed by Trump on Wednesday – which he says will go into effect on April 9 – include a 46% tariff on Vietnam and a 49% tariff on Cambodia.

According to FT sources, hundreds of thousands of Switch 2 consoles have already been sent from Vietnam to Nintendo’s US facilities since the start of the year, perhaps in anticipation of such a move.

The standalone Nintendo Switch 2 console will cost $449.99 / €469.99 / £395.99. The bundle version, which includes a digital version of Mario Kart World, will cost $499.99 / €509.99 / £429.99.

In Japan, the situation is somewhat different. There, players will be able to buy the Switch 2 from retail stores for 49,980 ($334), but this version will be region locked to Japan.

This ‘domestic only’ console will only have Japanese as the console’s language option, and the only Nintendo account that can be linked to it will be one created with the country/region setting set to Japan.

Japanese players who want the multilingual, region-free edition of Switch 2 can only purchase it from the Japanese My Nintendo Store at a price of 69,980 yen ($467).