Earlier this week, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella took to BlueSky to discuss the likely impacts of Donald Trump's proposed 25% tariff on imports from Mexico— which happen to include lots of video games sold on disc in the United States [h/t Ars Technica].
As he notes, not only could this limit the scope of physical game runs for games sold in the US, but some digital game prices may still rise to remain in scale with the now more expensive disc titles. This pricing could now quickly meet or exceed $85-90 at Standard Edition pricing tiers, an increase based purely on the tariff, and get even more outrageous with already-pricey Limited and Collectors Editions.
Fortunately, at the time of writing, President Donald Trump has already granted a wide, month-long exemption for tariffs targeting Mexico, including disc imports. For now, physical copies of video games may not be impacted. Current tariffs against China could also mark some long-term pricing increases to console hardware alongside GPU pricing increases we've seen, though as Ars Technica notes, Microsoft and Nintendo having shifted more of their console production away from China could help alleviate the potential impact on those consoles' pricing.
The continuous back-and-forth on this topic means that the proposed tariffs are not a 100% deal—they could change, go away, or get worse at any given moment, and we have no idea when that could happen in this climate. Outside of the gaming industry, several hardware manufacturers—not just Microsoft and Nintendo — are already moving production out of China in hopes of avoiding ever-shifting tariffs from the Trump administration.
Considering that digital distribution is becoming the leading way to play games—with even disc—based games in this era being heavily reliant on the same infrastructure due to the need to release patches for fixes or online play content—seeing disc-based console gaming become more and more of a niche wouldn't be surprising.
However, the price increases incurred on the games that remain physical and are not necessarily restricted to those titles could get spooky quickly for those hoping to extend their library of good, reliable ol' physical media. Hopefully, the tides will shift before we hit the days of Day One $100 Standard Edition games— and at least the 2020-era shift from $60 to $70 AAA pricing already helps mitigate some long-term pricing concerns, at least digitally.
