Both Sony and Microsoft have now followed in Nintendo’s footsteps by stating that they aren’t obligated to pass on their U.S. tariff refunds to customers who paid inflated prices for goods like the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
Back in July, Nintendo requested a dismissal for a proposed class action lawsuit which had alleged that “Nintendo stands to recover the same tariff payments twice – once from consumers through higher prices and again from the federal government through tariff refunds,” and therefore sought “restitution of those tariff overcharges, together with appropriate declaratory, injunctive, and monetary relief.”
Nintendo, however, said that consumers “received exactly what they bargained and paid for” after buying price-hiked goods (like the Switch 1 family of consoles which saw price increases last year), arguing that “if a consumer did not want to pay the advertised price, they were free to abstain from purchasing the product or seek out competing products.”
As Game File reports, Sony and Microsoft have been making familiar-sounding arguments since.
In Sony’s own request to dismiss a similar potential class action lawsuit this week, it argues: “Paying fair market price for voluntarily purchased consumer goods is not a legally cognizable injury in fact.” It also says that it hasn’t been proven that the U.S. tariffs were the reason for the PS5’s price hike last August in the first place – a claim which it dubs “speculative and illogical.” It points to this year’s further price hike, which was enforced after the U.S. IEEPA tariffs were terminated, adding: “If tariffs were the cause of the price increases, one would expect SIE to lower prices once the tariffs were eliminated – not raise them again.”
Similarly, last month, Microsoft requested to dismiss a lawsuit (thanks, Aftermath) that claimed the company “will reap those tariff payments twice,” and “that result is unjust,” by saying: “There is nothing unjust about Plaintiff purchasing an Xbox at an advertised price and getting exactly what he paid for – regardless of whatever theory he devised months later about Microsoft’s cost structure.”
The legal drama is still ongoing, but it certainly doesn’t sound like customers hoping to get some of their money back can expect to do so without a fight. Gaming is getting even more expensive thanks to factors like surging memory costs, which doesn’t exactly bode well for the affordability of the next generation of consoles like Project Helix and the PS6.