Nintendo Reveals Average Age And Salary Of Its Employees (As Of March 2020)

But, my uncle said he makes 100k a day! This list is false!

@Apportal Average salary, not everyone's salary.

Was hoping for the median instead since the average is skewed by executives.

@Incarna It will not. The directors are very few compared to the total number of employees (2400). Therefore the average will not be be affected significantly by their removal.

@Apportal He meant Bells.

An average doesn’t tell you that much a median income would. Nintendo is a really profitable company so they could stand to pay their employees more.

"... excluding persons seconded from the Company to outside the Company, but including persons seconded to the Company from outside the Company."
WHAT?! 🤪

If you take out the salaries of the 3 directors linked from this article then the average drops to $84417.

What is the purpose of this coming out today?

"Oh shoot our Mini Direct was a complete flop... let's show everyone how modest our salaries are so they will understand how we don't understand how to work from home. Please understand."

@Incarna The previous article listed salaries as $730k, $670k and $110k (excluding bonuses which I would assume don't get counted in these average salary calculations), which works out as the equivalent of just under 18 employees salaries. Not skewing the figures that much when they have 2395 employees. Taking those 3 out and reworking the average gives $86060. Just over $500 less per year.

@Enigk "2. Average annual salary is the amount paid inclusive of tax in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020, including extra wages and bonuses".
It does include bonuses so it's $84417.

@Obito_Sigma Japanese higher ups don’t make ridiculous salaries. Probably around 400 thousand or so.

I’m the age of the average employee then, if only I had the salary!

Average salary is a pointless metric. Removing directors, you still have executives, department heads, senior managers, middle management, lower management, analysts, Developers, programmers, service reps, IT staff, and countless other broad roles between which there will be a large disparity of pay.

@sixrings Mini Direct may be a flop for you but it is awesome for me.

All theme people and they can’t even announce a lineup for the next 5 months 😶

@ilh I really should read the small print more carefully. Thanks for pointing out my inability to read! 👍

@PretendWorking No but the 3 listed I assume are at the top.

How much 😱 I’m in the wrong job

Respectable numbers, especially the number of years people want to stay there.

You'd think, with that many employees, Zelda BotW 2 would be out next week!

Number of employees (persons): 2,395

Interesting that they have to specify persons.

How many toads work for Nintendo? How many koopas, shyguys and goombas? Something fishy is going on here.

Sounds reasonable to be honest.

@Purgatorium it's to differentiate from fte (full time employment) numbers, which is usually stated.

Considering Nintendo's stance on being an ethical AAA developer and publisher these numbers do not surprise me. Seems that most employees who join Nintendo like to lay down roots and the company does not like massive layoffs at the end of development (looking at you EA and Activision). This was shown in the Iwata era where top executives took pay cuts to keep staff on board when Nintendo was in a rockier financial situation.

The average salary is impressive and considering the large pool of staff, it is likely even if we remove executives that number will not do down much. Considering this is a company that is anti-lootbox, anti-microtransactions in AAA titles and anti-crunch this seems to be a company that really strives for excellence in both products and staff well-being.

More than what I can say about Sony with the recent allegations against Naughty Dog...

@MrBlacky Yep...you're in good company there. Company.

@Cosats we all have our opinions. It was awesome for those who were fans of those types of games, but most gamers aren’t so that’s why the graph NL made a while ago showed most were disappointed with it.

wow, what a salary!

It's good to see that there are still companies that have leadership with morals. Part of the issue in the US is that executive pay has grown by leaps and bounds while the average worker has had stagnant wages for years. A report in 2019 found that CEO compensation grew 940% since 1978 while typical worker compensation only increased 12% during the same time. Meanwhile, the productivity expected from employees has increased as companies reduce staff.

I have hope that other countries will eventually address this, but here we have the best government that corporations (and the .1%) desire.

So you've gotta be grandfathered in. Does this include employees at the Nintendo stores?

Yes, but how much does Mario make?

@Tandy255

However many coins he can grab.

Well that's only 4 times more than I make.

I guess they will be on pay cuts by the end of the year, unless they can sell a few new titles soon.😁

@Purgatorium 😂 I have played Mario Maker 2, he can’t keep all the coins he can grab. There is a Mushroom Kingdom Tax for rebuilding Peaches Castle!

@GrandScribe avg of 80 thousand is pretty good

To be fair, Nintendo is one of the only known companies to cut executive pay in order to allow workers to weather difficult financial times.

I like the premise of this article harkening back to grade school days when people would say “I have a friend of a friend whose uncle works for Nintendo and they told me that such and such game is coming out this year and it looks so amazing.” Of course what they were saying was usually completely false.

I’ve worked for them several times as a freelancer, but anytime I try to get into the company I get rejected...

They don’t seem to be interested in employing web designers or front end developers, they outsource all their web related stuff... which is good for me I guess. Although I’d prefer to work “at” Nintendo permanently as opposed to work “for” Nintendo just sometimes.

@King47 I don't think you understand maths xD. This is a general average not done percentile. If you have 98 staff all getting paid 40k and two board members at 2 million each then the average wage becomes 80k. So @Incarna is right.

@Apportal does a man face bug remind you of your uncle?

@mantez I truly have absolutely no clue what you meant by that.

These numbers do seem low. I'd venture a guess that the Nintendo numbers don't count stock based compensation (RSUs / Restricted Stock Units or options) due to different reporting methods in Japan and / or something being lost in translation. At U.S. tech companies cash bonuses are considered separate from RSUs when the term "bonus" is used.

Notably this article doesn't use the term "total compensation."

@GrandScribe Nah, seems pretty tame by any other standards. Nintendo's CEOs only make 20 time the average worker. That is incredibly tame. In American companies CEOs can make hundred or more times the average.

Hopefully some are working on Mario 64 remastered!
X x x I would love to work there walk into ceo office and say, so let’s talk about f zero, pilotwings, wave race, 1080 etc. Would probably last a day! X x x

@sandman89 I would speculate the average employee makes around 40-60K a year at Nintendo, but that pay can go higher for directors and seasoned employees, and starting can be lower. Seasoned developers likely make around 80-120K. Still not a bad job.

@Wexter yes Nintendo trive to make the best game of the industry, when keeping it employee happy with they Jobs.

is good to know most employees who work at Nintendo devoloping our favorites games and Services, stay at Nintendo for 13.9 years, this show that Nintendo is one of the rare developers/publicer that actualy care for the wellbeing of it worker, most Developers would have lay out 40/50% after the development of a game is finished.

I'd be willing to bet they have a lot of promotion, marketing and communications people working for them. On average these types of positions make lower than the average developer. Still being able to be a developer at Nintendo probably has perks outside of the normal salary such as representing them at events and paid trips. Plus all the knowledge you gain from working there and the prestige that would go with you to any other game company, it's gotta be a great job.

@Obito_Sigma Agreed. Log-normal distribution. Either the median or geometric mean would be more appropriate.

@doctorhino That's the vibe I get. We almost never read bad things about being a dev at Nintendo or a Nintendo 2nd Party so I get the impression that the job is just fun. I'm sure you get long nights or strict deadlines but it seems Nintendo have its business structure rather solid. And I think after the news of NST broke (Project H.A.M.M.E.R.) it made Nintendo really want to clean-up a lot of potentially bad practices that were happening internally.

You never hear a Nintendo studio, developer or executive talk about crunch as a positive. Or even them promoting anything but having a healthy work-life balance. It happened with Animal Crossing just last year where they did state they could have gotten the game out without the delay, however, they'd had to have crunched and they just decided it was not worth doing that to their employees. I believe the untimely death of Iwata shook a lot of executives within the company to take better care of themselves as well (most notably notorious workaholic Masahiro Sakurai).

@doctorhino Right, as a games developer or being in marketing they likely have a great environment to work in. I'm just commenting on what figures likely look like for many working there.

@RPGamer I remember watching it the first time it aired in the US on Adult Swim... almost 20 years ago! It's an all-time fave for sure