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In an industry already tanking a bunch of hits, full of layoffs and studio closures, the Japanese games industry seemed to be an exception in 2025—as noted by an analyst last month, five out of eight major publishers and studios hit all-time share price highs at the start of this year, with their only real issue being a lack of staff.
Well, the tariffs imposed by the United States have begun to put a stop to all that, it seems. Last week, the Trump administration imposed “reciprocal” tariffs across the globe. Japan is set to endure a 24% tariff that’ll go into effect April 9—which has naturally created a huge dent in the stock market.
As pointed out by Japanese industry analyst Dr. Serkan Toto of KantanGames on X, many of those same eight companies have endured huge stock market losses.
“It’s Monday 10 am in Japan, where Japanese game stocks currently react to these insultingly dumb tariffs like so,” Toto writes. Over the course of the day, VGC247 proceeded to keep track of said stocks until the market closed. Here were the final numbers for April 7:
- Nintendo: -7.85%
- Sony: -10.4%
- Capcom: -6.61%
- Bandai Namco: -7.37%
- Square Enix: -5.62%
- Sega: -7.29%
- Koei Tecmo: -5.41%
It should be noted, again, that the hike to 24% isn’t yet in effect—but baseline tariffs around the world of 10% happened after midnight on April 5. You might be wondering why those tariffs are impacting people who only publish and develop videogames like Square Enix—physical copies of games are increasingly irrelevant, after all—but it should be noted that any tariff that applies to physical goods is going to have knock-on impacts to digital services as well.
Companies like Nintendo and Sony are a little more intuitive, because they also make consoles—like the Switch 2, which has delayed pre-orders to America over the tariffs—but anything played on those consoles is bound to grow more expensive, as well. And it’s not just consoles: PC parts’ll feel the heat, too, even with exemptions for semiconductors in place.
As mentioned in the article I just linked, a worldwide economy also manufactures its parts… well, worldwide. PC Gamer’s own Jacob Ridley explains: “When a semiconductor is manufactured and then packaged into a separate system, it could be subject to a different tariff without exemption, i.e. within an add-in card, computer or server rack.”
VG247 is also right to point out that the US spends a huge amount on videogames—$46 billion in revenue in 2024, as compared to Japan, which spent around $16 billion. This disparity also can’t help matters—the takeaway being that one of gaming’s biggest spenders is about to be spending a whole lot less on gaming.
Ultimately, it’s a nightmare web of cause and effect, where the actual impact of these tariffs—so ‘carefully’ and ‘surgically’ applied that the Trump administration has, uh, imposed a tariff on an uninhabited island of penguins and seals—is logistically impossible to avoid. At the very least, the Japanese games industry isn’t alone in this—even board games are seeing a final end to the tabletop boom as a result. Unfortunately, we’re all in for some very interesting times.
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Kurt Indovina
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