Nintendo Increasing Employees' Base Salary in Japan by 10% - News

by William D'Angelo , posted on 07 February 2023 / 2,403 Views

Nintendo will be increasing the base pay of its employees in Japan by 10 percent, announced the company and reported by Reuters.

"It's important for our long-term growth to secure our workforce," said Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa in an earnings briefing.

This pay hike follows Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida calling for companies to pay workers more following inflation following years of deflation and stagnant wages.

The higher salaries might help attract more talent to Nintendo as Japan is currently dealing with labor shortages. This is due to years of falling birth rates and lower immigration.

Nintendo this week announced shipment figures for the Nintendo Switch reached 122.55 million units, while 994.30 million Switch games have been shipped lifetime. The company did lower its forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023, from 19 million units for the Nintendo Switch down to 18 million.

For the nine month period ending December 31, 2022, Nintendo reported net sales were down 1.9 percent to ¥1,295.18 billion ($9.80 billion) and an operating profit dropped 13.1 percent to ¥410.54 billion ($3.11 billion).

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

19 Comments

Hiku (on 07 February 2023)

A bit better than the layoff strategy. Just a bit.

Poliwrathlord (on 07 February 2023)

Wow Nintendo you're increasing your employees pay and cutting into the dividends I get for the shares I have in your company. Don't you ever think about shareholders! /s

Obviously this is great news and hope other Japanese video game companies are looking into doing something like this.

Kakadu18 Poliwrathlord (on 08 February 2023)

I think Bandai Namco raised their employee's salarys recently.

DonFerrari (on 07 February 2023)

Good measure

Leynos (on 07 February 2023)

But what does Phil Spencer think

LivncA_Dis3 (on 07 February 2023)

Meanwhile in Microsoft gaming division...

Wman1996 (on 07 February 2023)

Seems like a good idea. I don't know what Nintendo of Japan's lowest salaries are, but 10% is better than nothing or a smaller increase in single digits.

Kakadu18 Wman1996 (on 08 February 2023)

In 2019 their average salary was the equivalent of $80,000 with beliw 8 hour average workdays.

Zkuq Kakadu18 (on 08 February 2023)

Are the workdays 8 hours in practice though? My understanding is that the Japanese work culture is... something different.

Wman1996 Zkuq (on 08 February 2023)

It's tough to tell. The reports say Nintendo employees work slightly under 8 hours a day on average, but some of that could be underreporting on the employee's or employer's part. Some studies I found show that Americans work about 100 hours more a year than Japan, but who knows.