As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility report, Nintendo has given an overview of its global operations and staff numbers in a handy infographic.
Page three of this annual report shows a world map with all of Nintendo's global offices and staff numbers as of the end of March 2021, as well as a percentage breakdown between male and female employees in each region.
Overall, the company has 27 subsidiaries and employs 6,574 people around the world — an increase on the 26 subsidiaries and 6,200 employees detailed in last year's CSR report. You can check out the individual numbers in the image below:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Asia has the most employees with 2,498 in total, with 80.5% of them identifying as men and 19.5% women.
Nintendo of America is the next biggest in the staff number stakes, with 1,256 employees on the books. NOA is a little better in terms of gender balance, with 36.5% women on staff compared to 63.5% men.
The comparatively small 91-person Nintendo Australia office is by far the closest when it comes to gender parity, with women actually outnumbering men by 47 to 44.
And Nintendo of Europe employees 901 people in total — 38.1% of them women and 61.9% men.
All of these numbers represent a small shift towards gender equality compared to the previous year, although progress on that front is slow. Overall, it's fascinating to get a snapshot of the company and how its employees are dispersed across the globe. The document also includes a regional sales breakdown for hardware and software, which we've covered previously when the company released its 2020/21 financials.
Surprised to see that NOA is almost exactly half the size of NCL, or how tiny the company's Australian operation is by comparison? Let us know below.
[source nintendo.co.jp]
Comments (33)
Please open the branch in Indonesia. 🇮🇩
Patiently waiting for all the lefties to appear and go: "THeRES MoRe mEN THan woMeN WoRKinG aT NinTEnDO?!!!"
@Patrick-Sukiyaki Nice non-binary straw person argument
Most development is done in Japan so it is not surprising you see far more men than women.
Japan is still behind the curve in terms of opportunities for women, but those opportunities have increased quite a bit in the last 15-20 years.
My uncle got fired by Nintendo for leaking Star Fox GP.
**** my stupid-ass uncle.
And here it is. About 6,500 people. That is not even half the estimated employee on bigger gaming companies like Ubisoft. And with a hardware branch to manage as well. I hope this makes people understand why Nintendo doesn't produce that many games a year and why somes licences are collecting dust.
That’s .... not a whole lot of employees to be honest for all the stuff they manage, develop, produce and transport to the whole world... i expected a lot more.
@citizenerased they are not wrong. Even in this article they imply some sort of inequality even though every region has a significant number of women in the workplace. You can't force a 50/50 ratio.
84.59 million units sold as of end of March. I wonder how well the switch will fair this financial year with the announced line up?
Probably explains why Nintendo wasn't able to do much in 2020, compared to the corporate giants Sony and Microsoft. I'm surprised by the number of employees for such a significant company in the games industry.
However, something tells me that number in North America also applies to subsidiaries like Retro Studios and Next Level Games.
@Friendly
Right? I would have guessed at least twenty thousand. Maybe that‘s the reason why they manage to keep their quality.
I wonder how high salaries are for an average office worker.
@Kamalen Especially as they're now working on theme parks and films too.
@Friendly I've seen much smaller companies with a lot more employees.
But this is also a way to keep the quality high.
@Kamalen
A lot of Nintendo IPs are handled and/or developed by outside companies (GameFreak/TPC, Intelligent Systems, HAL Laboratory, Camelot, GoodFeel, Sora, Grezzo, Mercury Steam, Bandai Namco, Koei Tecmo, etc).
That is how Nintendo is able to manage such a large stable of brands while not being a huge company in terms of employee count.
Echoing many comments above, but that’s surprisingly few uncles for such a major global entertainment company. And even fewer aunts.
Always interesting to see infographics like this.
@Friendly seriously! I'm pretty shocked. That is a small number of people moving serious mountains
Certainly less employees that I would have assumed. Especially considering the global nature of the company.
I really don't see why they need to report the biological sex of their employees. Diversity is a good thing but forcing diversity at the cost of merit or efficiency is nonsense. Historic trends aren't going to reverse overnight. And gaming has been a male dominated industry since it started. But that is changing.
Just like video games have gone from being a niche thing only played by nerdy children in the 80s and 90s to a hobby enjoyed by almost all ages and demographics in the present day, it's only been in recent years that more and more women have been joining game development studios.
@ModdedInkling I am pretty sure the employee count does include subsidiaries like Retro Studios and Next Level Games, since Vancouver (Canadá) and Austin (TX, USA) are marked on the map.
@Heavyarms55 As always the problem is taken backwards. Lack of diversity is actually a efficiency / merit problem. Due to prejudices, competent people are denied positions or expression of good ideas. Forcing a bit is the only way to see cultural changes in an organization. Left alone, the same practice are self-reproducing.
Removed - inappropriate language; user is banned
I live in a sub-continent that clearly doesn't exist TT_TT
Also I hope Japan starts being more open to women in professional roles someday.
@Kamalen Nintendo don't believe bigger development budget and bigger development teams mean better videogames.
It's weird seeing a map laid out like this.
I see people have moved from the locked comments section of the other article to this one now. Ive got my popcorn ready this time
I know the joke, but I have family that are part of those figures!
@glaemay Not saying that it's a bad idea. Just saying people should stop expecting the moon from Nintendo, as it's relatively speaking a dwarf in the gaming world.
I really don't understand how "gender equality" is achieved by getting 50/50. if they are hiring who's best for the job it isn't going to be 50/50 and in my opinion as a "female" there simply will be more "males" working at a video game company.
@glaemay
Interestingly correct is the idea, however, more expenses also means many risks, and with more employees who have to receive their payment, it is well known that a great game with poor sales does not result in something favorable for everyone, especially at the time of the liquidation.
That's why Nintendo bets on the safe thing for them and their employees who earn very well and apparently, have a "safe" job, unlike other companies (cough cough EA cough cough) where that idea you mention, if it fails, I hope that those employees have another employment option.
Im constantly shocked how few studios Nintendo own. 6500 is next to nothing really for a billion dollar company
It's too bad the numbers weren't broken down even more by country. That might end up causing some problems somehow though. Interesting data all the same.
@Duffman92 Twenty thousand was a highly optimistic guess 😏
They've never been large and both Sony and Microsoft comfortably dwarfs Nintendo in many areas except game quality.
Think your guess is shared by other ppl though who might think Nintendo should have more games or oversee more releases. It's clear why they're selective.
Always knew their numbers were small in terms of employee headcount. Their UK operations are small (I vaguely remember or guess there are about 100 employees, probably fewer).
Actually, it always puzzled me when ppl would demand Nintendo do certain things when they don't have the number of people to pull it off.
@Kamalen
Nice story but it's not backed by fact. Women make up 18% of computer science majors. So in this case it would seem that based on qualifications that Nintendo has overhired women.
The issue with these analysis is their are a million ways to slice the pie. For instance, does your company hire of this sex? Does your business hire enough of this race? Does your business hire enough of this sexual orientation? Then it gets real fun with the intersections of those items. Then every region is different right? So the Seattle office has different demographics from the New York office and every other office so those demographics should be represented in the office. Then it gets even more complicated because my company has like 400 different positions. And I'm sure you aren't going to be happy with a company hiring a bunch of women janitors. So the company needs to make sure that the various manager/director/executive positions are filled with enough representation.
At it's core your argument is somewhat insulting. Iwata and Miyamoto were the top two at Nintendo for a long time and are responsible for what Nintendo is today. What you are saying is the only way a company could have their top two executives male is due to sexism because females should be 50%. And I happen to think that those two are some of the greatest minds in video games and both extremely deserving of their positions. I guess I just don't see how the solution to historic sexism against females is sexism against males.
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