Nintendo has suspended the shipment of its products to Russia, the company announced this week. The decision to do so was shared in statements to members of the press and followed announcements from both Microsoft and Sony within the past few days where the Xbox and PlayStation companies each announced that they, too, were halting sales in the region. Nintendo’s statement about its decision to suspend shipments did not mention Belarus which has been included in some companies’ decisions nor did it outright condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as we’ve seen in other statements.
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The comments below were provided to Eurogamer as a statement from Nintendo on the matter. In its statement, Nintendo cited “logistics” and the “considerable volatility” of the situation in Ukraine and Russia.
“We have decided to suspend shipping all Nintendo products to Russia for the foreseeable future,” a Nintendo spokesperson said. “This is due to considerable volatility surrounding the logistics of shipping and distributing physical goods.”
Nintendo added that the “Nintendo eShop in Russia is currently under maintenance following the suspension of transactions in Russian rubles by the payment provider” which means digital purchases have been halted there as well as Nintendo’s shipments of its physical goods like the Nintendo Switch consoles and the company’s first-party games.
This sort of decision from Nintendo was expected by many following the statements from Sony and Microsoft and the pressure put on the biggest of gaming companies to suspend their business in Russia. Nintendo also announced this week that it’d decided to delay the release of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp “in light of recent world events,” according to the brief announcement about the game’s second delay shared this week. The game has no new release date at this time but was previously scheduled to be released on April 8th.
With Nintendo suspending its sales in Russia, the company’s joined many others in doing so. In addition to Sony and Microsoft mentioned already, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, CD Projekt, and Ubisoft are just a few of the others who have followed suit. While halting business in Russia and sometimes Belarus are the most talked about actions we’ve seen, statements of support and donations to various relief organizations have been announced intermittently, too.
