More price hikes are coming thanks to President Trump’s tariffs. Diapers, toothpaste, cars, it’s all about to get more expensive. Families are projected to collectively pay millions more for back-to-school supplies and $2 billion extra on new clothes. Home Depot just warned home repairs and renovations will get pricier too. In gaming, the latest wave of trade-war-fueled inflation is already here. The average console is now anywhere from $30 to $100 more expensive than it was a year ago. Trump’s tariffs are a lot of things—random, chaotic, nonsensical. They are also secretly a massive tax on playing Grand Theft Auto 6.
Rockstar Games’ next blockbuster is expected to help sell millions of new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, the only hardware you’ll be able to play GTA 6 on when it arrives next May. It’s the kind of release that gets people who have been holding out on upgrading or who dropped out of gaming altogether to walk into a GameStop or Walmart and pick up a new console. And doing so will now cost an additional 20-35 percent, more than the highest sales tax in Europe. And console pricing could get even worse. Who’s ready for Nintendo to announce a Switch 2 OLED in 2027 that starts at $600?
Microsoft was the first to pull the trigger on responding to Trump’s trade war with price increases. In May, the Xbox Series S went from $300 to $370 and the Xbox Series X went from $500 to $600. Controllers and headsets also got more expensive. Nintendo followed suit earlier this month, holding the line on the $450 price tag of its new Switch 2 but bumping the older models up by $50, with accessories getting multiple rounds of price hikes. Sony has now thrown up its hands, too. Having already raised the disc-less PS5 to $450 with the Slim redesign, it’s going to be $500 starting August 21, with the other versions, including the Pro, going up by $50 as well.
“Even though Sony is diversifying away from China (for US bound shipments), it’s still an important manufacturing center for Sony. 30% tariff on China, 15% tariff on Japan, 20% tariff on Vietnam, 19% tariff on Malaysia means Sony is impacted no matter what,” wrote Niko Partners research director Daniel Ahmad on X. “I was expecting a $50 price increase because Sony has been proactive in adapting in the wake of tariffs. Xbox’s price increase being slightly higher is because of the increased dependence on China (higher tariff).” He notes that prices could still go up again depending on whatever Trump decides to do next.
When GTA 5 launched in 2013, a new Xbox 360 was as cheap as $200, and a new PS3 was just $250. In today’s dollars, they would still only cost $280 and $350, respectively. Trump’s tariffs are far from the only reason console prices have gone way up, but they’ve certainly made an existing trend way worse in the U.S. Trade groups warned of billions being sapped out of the video game industry if Trump went ahead with his most draconian tariffs. We’re not even in that worst-case scenario, and things already suck.
None of this should be that surprising. Trump has been promising new tariffs for years. He campaigned on it. He got elected. He is doing it. And now we are stuck with the bill. The president has been promising for months to bargain his way out of dropping poll numbers and a possible economic recession by winning better trade deals and ushering in a new golden age of American manufacturing. So far, it hasn’t worked. It reminds me of lobbing a banana at the racers ahead of you in Mario Kart, only to miss them and end up driving over it yourself. Call it the art of the peel. Those are getting more expensive, too.
