Following Nintendo denying that it owed refunds to customers due to price hikes imposed by import and export tariffs in the US, Sony and Microsoft are now also arguing the same. According to Game File, Sony CFO Lin Tao said last month that “most” of the refunds the company gets from the tariffs will be recouped by its gaming division, noting that $508 million in refunds are expected to come to the company.
More recently, Sony’s lawyers have argued in a similar way as Nintendo that it has no obligation to pass on these refunds to consumers who may have purchased PlayStation hardware during the tariff-induced price hikes. “Paying fair market price for voluntarily purchased consumer goods is not a legally cognizable injury in fact,” wrote the lawyers in a legal motion filed this week.
Microsoft’s lawyers made the same argument, noting that consumers have gotten what they paid for at the advertised price, and that there has been “nothing unjust” about the transaction. “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.”
It is worth noting, however, that both statements are far from the end of this legal battle, and the lawsuits are slated to continue for some time.
Nintendo’s arguments about the matter came about in July in the case of Hoffert et al v. Nintendo. Lawyers noted that consumers “received exactly what they bargained and paid for” when they made purchases during the price hikes. They went on to note that the plaintiffs “are not entitled to a rebate simply because of intervening legal developments related to tariffs.”
“The common thread among Plaintiffs’ claims is that it is somehow ‘unfair’ that Nintendo has not retroactively adjusted its prices for completed sales in response to the outcome of the tariff litigation. But that is not how commercial transactions work.”
These lawsuits came about following the US Supreme Court ruling that the US tariffs were illegal earlier this year. The motion passed with a vote of 6-3. At the time, however, no concrete ruling had been made about whether refunds from the tariff-induced price hikes would be passed on to consumers. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the US federal government “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers” following the vote.
The Supreme Court’s decision led to more than a thousand companies, including Nintendo of America, filing their own lawsuits against the US government to demand refunds.
“This action concerns Defendants’ initiation and administration of unlawful trade measures that have, to date, resulted in the collection of more than $200 billion in tariffs on imports from nearly all countries,” wrote Nintendo’s lawyers at the time.
The US tariffs, imposed last year before eventually being deemed illegal, created quite a few questions about how gaming hardware would be affected. While software companies noted that they wouldn’t be hit as hard, Nintendo was among the companies that noted that the tariffs might lead to price hikes.
