The defense all three companies are running is narrower than the argument the plaintiffs want to have. Sony's filing does not assert that the refund money belongs to Sony by right; it asserts that the buyers were not injured, because they voluntarily paid advertised prices and got working consoles [7]. Microsoft makes the same move through the plaintiff's Xbox: he paid for it, received it, still uses it, and is now trying to renegotiate the price after the fact [11]. From Nintendo, the addition is that plaintiffs do not dispute the price adjustments were lawful and do not allege any breach or misrepresentation [15]. Three motions, one theory, which is that the sale closed at the advertised number and nothing afterward reopens it.
The asymmetry sits in how the same companies described causation at each end. When prices went up, the increases were attributed to market conditions [2]. In court, Sony goes further and says plaintiffs cannot plausibly allege that tariffs caused the console increases at all, given inflation, supply chain costs, currency and demand [8], while Microsoft argues firms have no obligation to move prices up or down day by day as forecasts materialise or fail to [12]. Nintendo is the outlier: its filing names tariffs among the inputs it responded to, alongside labor, shipping and memory costs [17], and it leans on having told the public in advance that tariffs were among the market conditions informing pricing [15]. That notice is offered as proof nobody was misled, and it is also the clearest causal link between tariff and price anywhere on this record.
The sums involved are partly public. Sony told a quarterly meeting in July that it expects around 80 billion yen in tariff refunds across Sony Group, which Business Insider puts at $510 million [9]; Nintendo has recorded a $300 million refund [16]. Add those and the two disclosed figures come to roughly $810 million [18], with Microsoft's expectation not disclosed [13]. Sony's number is group-wide, so a restitution theory scoped to PlayStation buyers would reach only a slice of it.
The skeptic's version is short: you agreed to a price, you got the hardware, and no one wrote a rebate clause into the sale. The complaints answer that the grievance is the second transaction rather than the first, the money the company collects back from the government on units consumers already bought at the higher price [6][14]. The motions do not resolve whether that second transaction creates an obligation to the buyer; they argue the court should never reach the question.
This is also why the retailers can sit in a different place without anyone being irrational. Walmart and Costco have said they intend to lower costs for consumers squeezed by tariff-related increases [5]. A forward price cut costs margin on future units and admits nothing, whereas cutting cheques to past buyers concedes precisely the causal link the same lawyers are denying in filings.
No court has ruled on any of the three motions in this record [19]. For any company now holding refund money, the choice is between paying some of it out on terms it sets and leaving the terms to a judge, and the console makers have chosen the second.