Selloff: Japanese Stocks Plummet in Bear Market Amid Tariff Jitters – Reuters

Tokyo, Japan – Japanese stocks plummet as concerns over tariffs cause major banks to falter. The ongoing selloff in the market has investors on edge, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average set to open lower after a staggering $3.1 trillion was wiped off U.S. markets.

Asian markets, including Japan, have been hit hard as President Trump’s tariff plan continues to unfold. The uncertainty surrounding the tariffs has led to a deepening slide in market values, particularly affecting bank stocks in Japan.

Investors are closely watching the situation unfold, with many bracing for further impact on global markets. The turmoil in the financial sector has raised concerns about the broader economic implications of the tariff situation.

In Japan, bank stocks have been particularly hard hit by the recent market volatility. The uncertainty surrounding the tariffs has led to a lack of investor confidence, resulting in a bear market for Japanese stocks.

The escalation of the trade tensions between the U.S. and its trading partners has led to growing fears of a global trade war. This has sparked a wave of selling in markets around the world, with Japan being no exception.

As the situation continues to evolve, investors are on high alert for any further developments that may impact market stability. The ongoing selloff in Japan and other markets highlights the interconnected nature of the global economy, where developments in one country can have far-reaching effects.

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Van Dreunen said something similar, adding, “The timing aligns with the broader industry’s gradual price increases for premium content, as we’ve seen with other publishers moving to $70 base games. Nintendo may be leapfrogging this intermediate step, calculating that the massive built-in audience for Mario Kart will tolerate a higher price point for what appears to be a significantly expanded experience compared to previous entries.”

McWhirter also pointed out that not only could this higher cost for Mario Kart World be mitigating things like tariffs or manufacturing costs, it also could be helping balance out other, invisible costs. There’s those pesky manfacturing costs, for one, with McWhirter noting that the 3D NAND flash memory from supplier Macronix experts suspect Nintendo is using in Switch 2 game cards is pricey. But there’s also the cost of migrating so many first-party titles to Nintendo Switch 2, and the slow build the console will see in its first three years when its blockbuster exclusives are reaching a much smaller audience than was available on the Nintendo Switch.

Other experts brought up other factors. Harding-Rolls made a compelling point about Nintendo otherwise not aggressively pursuing in-game monetization, and needing to account for inflation somehow. And he added: “Nintendo has a bit of a history of pricing games higher than other platforms when coming to the market later than other platforms – in this case PS5 and Xbox Series. I remember back in the day N64 titles being more than PS1 titles for example. Some of that is related to cost of goods, but Nintendo also likes to follow its own approach and price based on its own appreciation of value.”

Rhys Elliott, games analyst at Alinea Analytics, called out the discrepancy in physical and digital pricing, which is still just a rumor in the U.S. but has been confirmed for the UK and other territories. He suggests this would be a clear move from Nintendo to push consumers toward digital games, especially when paired with the Virtual Game Card announced last week.

Nintendo is charging this price because they feel they can and that people will pay.

“PlayStation and Xbox have already pushed their platforms to become digital-first, driven by strategies like multi-game subscriptions, digital-only consoles, free-to-play’s rise, and platform holders pushing consumers to digital versions via perks (like extra cosmetics and the ability to pre-load a game so it’s instantly ready to play at launch),” he said.

“So PlayStation and especially Xbox are very digital-first. But Nintendo is different, more 50-50. In the last nine months of 2024, 51% of Switch software sales were digital. The number was even lower in the holiday period (43.4% digital for calendar Q4), as always. For consumers, a unique value proposition of physical games is the preowned and rental markets. But Nintendo’s reliance on physical impacts its bottom line, hence the nudging. Nintendo does not gain revenues from physical renting and resales. After all, a copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe could be sold on the reseller market 100 times or rented 100 times, but Nintendo would only capture revenues from that first sale. A digital-only market means more revenue and price control for Nintendo.”

Finally, I asked this question of Toto, who referred to the jump from $60 games to an $80 Mario Kart World as “quite bold.” His explanation was short and sweet:

“Tariffs could play a role, but