Nintendo of America has announced a promotional event called the Customer Appreciation Sale, running from the evening of September 12 through September 26, 2026. The sale applies roughly 30% discounts across dozens of digital Switch games and bundles, along with select physical games, downloadable content, accessories, amiibo figures, and apparel.
The company has described it as one of the largest promotions it has ever run.
Where the Money Came From
Nintendo has acknowledged that the promotion was made possible in part by money the company recovered from the U.S. government related to import tariffs. In its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 (April through June 2026), Nintendo disclosed that it booked roughly $300 million as a reduction in cost of sales tied to these tariff refunds.
The company indicated that it had largely absorbed the original tariff costs itself rather than passing them on through higher prices, and framed the sale as a way of directing the recovered funds back toward its customer base, though not through direct refunds to anyone who paid inflated prices, but through a store wide markdown available to everyone.
This distinction has drawn some pointed reactions from fans, since a general discount is quite different from compensating the specific buyers who paid more for hardware during the period when tariffs were in effect.
Why Was Nintendo Subject to IEEPA Tariffs in the First Place?
IEEPA stands for the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law that normally gives the U.S. president authority to regulate economic transactions during declared national emergencies.
Starting in early 2025, the Trump administration invoked this law to impose sweeping tariffs on a wide range of imported goods, including game consoles, accessories, and hardware components.
This wave of tariffs hit just as Nintendo was preparing to launch the Switch 2 in the United States, so the company faced an unusually difficult timing problem.
In response, Nintendo took the unusual step of pausing U.S. preorders for the console altogether while it assessed the financial impact, and it ultimately launched the Switch 2 domestically at a higher price point than originally expected, citing a mix of tariff exposure and component shortages.
The situation shifted in February 2026, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 6 to 3 decision in a case brought by Learning Resources against the Trump administration, that the executive branch had exceeded its legal authority in imposing these particular tariffs under IEEPA.
Following that ruling, the U.S. Court of International Trade directed customs authorities to begin returning an estimated $165 billion in tariff payments to importers through a refund mechanism.
Nintendo’s roughly $300 million refund was part of that broader repayment process.
Why the Backlash
Even though Nintendo maintains that it mostly absorbed the tariff costs rather than raising prices because of them, that claim is now being tested in court.
Consumers filed a class action lawsuit in April 2026 alleging that Nintendo unfairly benefited twice, first by raising hardware and accessory prices while citing tariffs as the reason, and later by recovering a substantial refund from the government for those same tariffs without passing the savings back to the people who paid the higher prices.
Separately, reporting indicates that Nintendo has argued in court that consumers have no legal claim to the refunded tariff money the company received, a stance that stands in some tension with the goodwill messaging behind the Customer Appreciation Sale.
Why Prices Went Up in the First Place
Across the console industry, manufacturers including Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft raised hardware and accessory prices during 2025 to offset the anticipated cost of the new tariffs.
For Nintendo specifically, the Switch 2’s initial U.S. price already reflected tariff related cost pressure combined with component supply issues, and some reporting notes a further price adjustment on the console that took effect around September 1, 2026.
Put simply, the sequence looks like this. Tariffs raised Nintendo’s import costs. The company partly passed those costs on through higher console and accessory prices.
The tariffs were later ruled unlawful and partially refunded to Nintendo. Rather than returning that refund to the specific customers who paid more, Nintendo chose to fund a broad, time limited discount event instead.
That gap between who paid the higher prices and who benefits from the refund is the main source of the criticism.