A certain someone’s tariffs that were put into place have slowly been causing havoc in the gaming space, just as we predicted. But now, an industry darling—8BitDo—has announced that it will no longer ship its products to the United States due to President Trump’s tariffs.
As initially reported by Polygon, 8BitDo stated that it has “temporarily” paused all shipments to the United States due to the tariffs, which currently sit at a massive 145% as a result of the ongoing trade war with China. As a result, only items currently in 8BitDo’s U.S.-based warehouses will be available. So, once those are gone, we won’t be able to order anything else unless this nonsense is resolved.
Which, when you think about it, comes at a terrible time—with the Nintendo Switch 2 launching in just a month. Not to mention that 8BitDo makes some of the best controllers on the market, usable across nearly every platform: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC. And what makes many of these controllers superior in my mind is the addition of Hall Effect joysticks, and those sexy 2.4GHz adapters, that don’t experience the input lag that Bluetooth controllers do. Despite owning more Xbox controllers than I should, I prefer 8BitDo’s gaming accessories for good reason.
Sadly, 8BitDo isn’t the only casualty as of late. Nintendo delayed pre-orders for the Nintendo Switch 2 by a few days. While the console itself didn’t see a price hike, several accessories did. Anbernic, known for its retro handheld devices, has also been affected. And while Razer was impacted as well, it has recently resumed shipping to the U.S.—albeit with much higher prices on its products.
As a gamer, this sucks. We’re stuck in the middle of this trade war, which personally makes no sense. But since I don’t want to get political here, I’ll leave that out of this news.
