I am not a lawyer, but I imagine the people bringing the lawsuit are going to have some problems in court. First of all, they will have to prove how much of the tariff paid directly by Nintendo of America was passed to the consumer. All they know is that at the same time as the tariff was announced, Nintendo launched a new system for a higher than expected price and increased the MSRP on a couple hardware SKUs. They could have raised prices due to non-tariff costs (AI gobbling up hardware, inflation). They could have raised the price due to indirect tariffs that they will not get refunded (increasing cost of parts for delivery trucks). They could have raised prices for no reason at all, knowing that people would just blame the tariff while they pad their profits.
Even if they show that tariff costs were directly passed on to the consumer, why do the consumers have a right to Nintendo’s refund? If Nintendo gets an income tax refund, they don’t send the money to customers. When a game is an unexpected hit, they don’t have to give everyone back money because the fixed development cost was spread across more copies.
And what about items that Nintendo paid tariffs on but did not raise the price? Presumably, the settlement that Nintendo gets from the government is going to be less than what Nintendo could have made if instead of tariffs that money could have gone into developing more games. If they lose the trial, can they turn around and demand consumers pay them 10¢ for every physical game they bought in the last 12 months?
I am not a lawyer, but I imagine the people bringing the lawsuit are going to have some problems in court. First of all, they will have to prove how much of the tariff paid directly by Nintendo of America was passed to the consumer. All they know is that at the same time as the tariff was announced, Nintendo launched a new system for a higher than expected price and increased the MSRP on a couple hardware SKUs. They could have raised prices due to non-tariff costs (AI gobbling up hardware, inflation). They could have raised the price due to indirect tariffs that they will not get refunded (increasing cost of parts for delivery trucks). They could have raised prices for no reason at all, knowing that people would just blame the tariff while they pad their profits.
Even if they show that tariff costs were directly passed on to the consumer, why do the consumers have a right to Nintendo’s refund? If Nintendo gets an income tax refund, they don’t send the money to customers. When a game is an unexpected hit, they don’t have to give everyone back money because the fixed development cost was spread across more copies.
And what about items that Nintendo paid tariffs on but did not raise the price? Presumably, the settlement that Nintendo gets from the government is going to be less than what Nintendo could have made if instead of tariffs that money could have gone into developing more games. If they lose the trial, can they turn around and demand consumers pay them 10¢ for every physical game they bought in the last 12 months?
Yup, Nintendo raised the price on their luxury goods, and people chose to pay the inflated price. Why the price was inflated is irrelevant.