Japan lines up for Nintendo Switch 2 – and for rice

Japan lines up for Nintendo Switch 2 – and for rice

welcome back it’s a big day for Nintendo with the launch of a new console generation the Nintendo Switch 2 global rollout will be staggered but hundreds of thousands of fans in Japan will be hoping to get their hands on one cnbc’s Karen Joi is one of the lucky ones and joins us now thank you very much i shouldn’t take all of the credit because here you are the Switch 2 that everyone has been waiting for you had to pre-order this win the lottery for it get in line and buy it at 10:00 a.m this morning all of that was done by my amazing cameraman Futan Naga i am just taking credit for this and holding it up look you know I feel like today I saw markets in action market dynamism in action because as you know we do this every day on CNBC price is where supply meets demand so this is the slightly cheaper version uh the eShop version which is going for just a shy just shy 50,000 yen in Tokyo um it comes with these nifty controllers that are magnetically attached to the device and you can put it on these consoles if you want to play by yourself and since Futa is a diehard gamer he forked out another $100 roughly for this which is the Pro console so you can do even niftier things with this and this is also the caveat because this is show and tell the Micro SD Express card with Mario on it this basically doubles the memory on this by 256 gigah and apparently this looks very innocuous but once these game consoles start to hit the market in in mass these are going to be very coveted as well and why we’re talking about this yes we’re all interested in Nintendo but it’s because a third of these are made in Vietnam and everything that’s made in Vietnam that goes to the US may have a huge tariff slapped on them after this so-called pause is over so the question was and Nintendo hasn’t answered this how much are they ramping up and stockpiling this for the US consumer and how much are they willing to um stomach some of the difference in the tariffs once that once the dust settles on there and I think the question a lot of the fans in the in the market American market are concerning because they won’t be able to get their hands on this quite yet is what the markup from those tariffs are going to be in the United States and I think this is really market dynamism um you know you might say at its best or at its worst but you know they’re saying you can play the old games on them um I don’t know if you’re much of a gamer i’m really not to be honest but um he also put bought the Mario Kart game as well the cart which is apparently one of the coveted you need a console you need new games to play on them right that’s the whole point so that goes on sale today as well he’s got that as well you have to download it um so I think I have one of the most coveted pieces of hardware in Tokyo right now sure i’m I’m sure you do i’m not much of a gamer but when I do go to my son’s friend’s house then I’ve known to have a little bit of a dabble on Super Mario Kart it’s very cute and fun as an expression of soft power it’s very important isn’t it i remember the late uh Shinszo Arby popping down a tunnel uh as Mario and then emerging on the other side as as Luigi uh do you think that the Switch 2 can emulate the success of its uh predecessor what does it do about projecting Japan’s soft power in this environment i mean it’s an iconic name right mario is an iconic name nintendo is an iconic name um I it’s been eight years so it’s been long overdue i mean people call this an upgrade but people are also saying that you know maybe eight years is too long to wait to call it an upgrade um I you know I think soft power has its limits right now i mean we know that and I think some of the technological prowess that Japan enjoyed back when Shinszo Abbe was in his heyday and popping out as Luigi has really changed because the dynamics have shifted as well um but having said that this is a household name and I think this is the kind of brand uh that carries well still in overseas markets but you know you can be an amazing brand but if you’re getting slapped with a tariff of more than 40% it’s a tough business carrie what does it tell you about the economic health of the consumer when there’s clearly ample and abundant demand to shell out in the region of $500 US for a switch 2 and yet there are some very real cost of living issues associated with the affordability of rice what’s going on there yeah I mean yeah I mean let me answer that in two phases look there’s a black I’m just going to call it what it is it’s a black market for Nento products like this because yesterday when I went online there were retailers that were selling this even though they didn’t have their hands on it at about double more than double the price on the internet and the Nintendo has been trying to clamp down on that because you know even if you have the ticket that you won the lottery to to buy this you have to show your ID and they made it very hard but the resale value is really what’s what has people talking so I think that part of the economy so to speak I think is a little bit different from reality but but you rais a good point i mean if people are willing to pay let’s say $450 for a game console why are they lining up to buy this which is rice and this rice is very special i kind of had to it was hard getting my hands on this because this as it says is government stockpiled rice and what’s happening over the last week is the government has decided to release these stock piles to retailers directly to try and get the price down now I think the difference in that is that this is a luxury this is a staple and people are not willing to pay double the price of rice that they were the same rice that they were 12 months ago so they’ve decided to release the stockpile but this is really old rice it’s 3 years old under normal circumstances my first reaction would be you but people are lining up for this and I think that raises the question of mismanagement by the Japanese government because stockpiling started in ’95 you’re not technically supposed to release them unless it’s an emergency it’s definitely hasn’t been any natural disaster but they were very slow to address this and the reason why they’re you know getting on board right now is because there’s election coming up in July and rice is always a sensitive matter but I think at the end of the day labor costs are going up in Japan global you know global warming is a reality to get this to the consumer goes through a lot of retail chains in Japan i think this is the key point that people miss i buy this at the supermarket of course the retailer’s adding on a little bit of price to get a profit but even before that when the farmer grows this Japan Agricultural Cooperative this is basically the farm vote in Japan it’s akin akin to the National Rifle Association for the Republican party so they before harvest go to the farmers and say look we’re willing to pay this much if you’ll give us this so they tack on a little bit they send it to the wholesaler that also costs money the wholesaler then moves it to the retailer that also costs money and finally the retailer gives it to the stores and then I have to pay it for it so I think that kind of dynamic is unique to Japan and probably something that needs to be addressed in the long term because this is a short-term fix also unique and critical to India and the conversation on US India trade deals agriculture potentially is going to be a major major stumbling block in that as I’m sure it is in Japan carrie thank you very much indeed great coverage

CNBC stood in two lines today: one for discounted rice, and one for Nintendo’s newest console, Nintendo Switch 2. Kaori Enjoji talks prices, and pricing pressures.