After quite a successful year, Nintendo directors are reportedly enjoying their cut of the profits. According to Nintendo Life, the company's top three senior directors have received sizable performance-based pay increases averaging around $2 million.
Over the past year and a half, Nintendo has seen a significant growth in sales, in particular due to the circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a large number of people turning to gaming during lockdowns, the industry as a whole, including Nintendo, greatly benefitted from the drastic shift in lifestyle. Not only was Nintendo Switch the best-selling console of the first half of 2021 in the United States, its games were among the best-selling Switch titles of the last year. Animal Crossing: New Horizons accounted for almost 10% of Switch game sales, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe became the United State’s best-selling racing game of all time. After a year of such triumphs, pay increases come as no surprise.
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Nintendo’s annual financial report details the exact earnings of the three top executives: Shuntaro Furukawa, Shigeru Miyamoto and Shinya Takahashi. While the report lists their salaries in Japanese yen, a conversion reveals that each received performance-based compensation averaging at around $2 million USD. The full breakdown of each of their salaries can be seen below:
| Total Compensation | Fixed Compensation | Performance-Based Compensation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shuntaro Furukawa | ~$2.9 million | $710,500 | $2.19 million |
| Shigeru Miyamoto | ~$2.3 million | $655,992 | $1.64 milion |
| Shinya Takahashi | ~1.75 million | $109,332 | $1.64 million |
Given that each director’s base salary is unchanged compared to the previous year, the salary increases are a direct result of Nintendo’s successful fiscal year. Notably, even with these bonuses, the company executives’ salaries are modest compared to their western counterparts, some of whom earn tens of millions of dollars each year. Even compared to Nintendo’s total profits, which totaled to around $4 billion in the last year, the directors’ compensation is relatively low. And if you’re wondering how the directors’ salaries compare to that of their employees, the company’s financial report states that the average annual employee salary is $88,276 with an average length of service of around 14 years. Based on those data, Nintendo sure seems to be getting something right.
With the OLED model launching in October and a collection of highly anticipated games on the horizon, this year is shaping up to be yet another big success for Nintendo.
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