Sony and Microsoft this week each asked federal judges to dismiss consumer class-action lawsuits accusing the companies of pocketing tariff refunds instead of sharing them with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox buyers who paid higher prices in 2025. Nothing has been decided: no judge has ruled, no class has been certified, and no refund has been ordered or paid to any PS5 or Xbox buyer.
The lawsuits — Sony’s filed in the Northern District of California, Microsoft’s in a federal court in another state — rest on the same legal theory, known as unjust enrichment: a claim that a company kept money it isn’t fairly entitled to. Plaintiffs say Sony and Microsoft raised console prices in 2025, blaming tariffs at the time, and are now getting some of those tariff payments back from the U.S. government. Keeping that refund without passing any of it to the buyers who covered the higher price, the suits argue, is unjust. The allegations remain unproven: neither company has been found to have done anything wrong. That claim is exactly what the companies are now asking the courts to reject with a motion to dismiss, a request to end a lawsuit early, before it reaches a trial or a jury.
Sony raised the U.S. price of the PS5 by about $50 around August 2025, citing tariffs at the time; Microsoft raised Xbox prices in May 2025 for the same stated reason, though no dollar figure for that increase has been reported. Nintendo’s tariff dispute is a different matter entirely: in March 2026, it sued the federal government seeking its own refund on tariffs it paid on Switch imports — not a consumer lawsuit like the ones Sony and Microsoft are now trying to dismiss.
The refunds at the center of all this became possible because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling months earlier. In February 2026, the Court held in Learning Resources v. Trump that the law the administration had used to impose the tariffs — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — did not actually authorize the president to do so. That ruling is what opened the door for importers, including Sony and Microsoft, to seek tariff refunds from the government. It did not rule on the consumer lawsuits themselves; the ruling is background to the tariff-refund dispute.
Sony has said it expects to recover roughly $508 million in tariff refunds from the U.S. government, with most of that going to its PlayStation division, according to Sony’s own disclosure. That figure is money the government owes Sony — not a pool set aside for consumers, and not an amount any court has confirmed or ordered paid out.
In its filing, Sony argues that paying the advertised price for a console someone chose to buy isn’t a legally recognized injury, and calls the plaintiffs’ link between tariffs and the 2025 price increase “speculative and illogical.” Sony’s motion points out that it raised PS5 prices again in 2026, after the tariffs had already been struck down, arguing that undercuts the idea that tariffs drove the original increase: “If tariffs were the cause of the price increases, one would expect [Sony] to lower prices once the tariffs were eliminated — not raise them again.”
Microsoft’s motion makes a similar argument in blunter terms, stating plainly: “There is nothing unjust about [the] Plaintiff purchasing an Xbox at an advertised price and getting exactly what he paid for.”
Not every company facing this situation has chosen to fight it in court. Panic, the small company behind the Playdate handheld, isn’t part of either lawsuit. It voluntarily refunded tariff surcharges to customers — $12.36 each, as reported at the time — after receiving its own government tariff refund, rather than contesting a similar claim.
For now, there’s nothing for PS5 or Xbox owners to do. No settlement, refund plan or timeline has been announced by either company, and no court has ruled on whether these cases can even proceed. The next step is procedural: judges handling the cases will decide whether the lawsuits move forward or get thrown out at this early stage.