On April 24, the NIntendo Switch 2 will be available for pre-orders on these sites:
Best Buy – Pre-orders start at midnight Eastern.
Walmart – Pre-orders start at midnight Eastern.
Gamestop – Pre-orders start at 11am Eastern.
Nintendo – If you have a Nintendo Switch Online membership and at least 50 total gameplay hours, you can register to receive an invitation to pre-order. They’ll start going out on May 8.
Where is the Nintendo Switch 2 Being Made?
Nintendo has stated that roughly 1/3 of all Switch 2 consoles are being manufactured in Vietnam, with some others made in Cambodia, but most of the rest made in China.
Nintendo was originally supposed to start taking pre-orders on April 6, but they delayed this after tariffs were announced for dozens of countries, including Vietnam and China. Vietnam wisely was one of the first to come to the table to negotiate, and China of course decided to fight back, foolishly calling the Trump Administration’s bluff before realizing that the Trump Administration does not bluff. When China put even more tariffs on American products than they already had, the Trump Administration raised its tariffs to 125%.
Will Nintendo Raise its Prices?
Wall Street—who was the main culprit in leading American to its dependence on China—not surprisingly freaked out. Most shareholders of American companies want us to continue to be dependent on China’s slave labor and environmental abuses, as long as we can get cheap stuff.
But you can see the tariffs already doing their work in this case. Nintendo is already stockpiling a lot of inventory from Vietnam, and will likely increase production there as it ramps down production in China. That’s a really good thing. In fact, it was able to keep its launch price at $449.99 ($499.99 with the Mario Kart bundle) because it made the wise choice of diversifying console production outside of China.
If you pre-order one, there’s a decent chance you’ll get one from Vietnam.
Accessories won’t have such an easy time; Nintendo is already increasing the prices of those because so many of them are exclusively made in China. The hope, of course, is that there’ll be more factories around the world who can take on making those.
Conclusion
A few years ago, one couldn’t dream of a major video game console being made anywhere but China. Which means China would monopolize supply chains and—as Apple learned with COVID—would ultimately call the shots and be able to continue to abuse its own people to produce things that Americans would gobble up, enriching the CCP and the PLA in the process.
While tariffs may results in temporary increases in prices, in the long-term the goal is to break China from its stranglehold on technology, courtesy of greedy Americans. It will be worth it in the long run.
