What you need to know
- Nintendo recently released an annual financial report for the fiscal year ending in March 2021.
- The report detailed key earnings across Nintendo and all of its sister companies, as well as employees.
- The top three executives earned salary bonuses based on performance, totaling in the millions.
It's no secret that the ongoing global pandemic has affected the gaming industry in both positive and negative ways. For Nintendo, it means that their flagship system, the Nintendo Switch, ended up being one of the best-selling consoles on the market, resulting in some record profits for the company.
In a recent annual financial report published by Nintendo regarding the fiscal year ending in March 2021, the company disclosed the salaries of their top executives, namely Nintendo President Shintaro Furukawa; Father of Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto; and the General Manager of the Entertainment Planning and Development Division, Shinya Takahashi.
Each executive member receives, on principle, a fixed salary. For Furukawa, Miyamoto, and Takahashi, these salaries amount to around $712,000, $657,000, and $109,000 USD respectively. Each member also received "performance-based compensation" at the end of the fiscal year, amounting to approximately $2.19 million for Furukawa and $1.64 million for both Miyamoto and Takahashi.
Given the number of amazing games that have come out for the Nintendo Switch within the last fiscal year, the bonuses are no surprise. And while it's definitely a salary that would make the average Joe weep with joy, they are considerably modest in relation to other video game company executives. Robert Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, was recently cited as being one of the most overpaid CEOs of 2020, earning over $30 million dollars in that year alone.
Nevertheless, it seems that the salaries of current Nintendo executives are a reflection of the company's attitudes toward humility, as former President, the late Satoru Iwata, famously displayed with a 50% salary cut following the abysmal sales of the Nintendo Wii U, so as to prevent any employees from being laid off.
A new and improved Nintendo Switch
The newest member of the Nintendo Switch family is the OLED model, which incorporates new and improved features to the system including a larger OLED display, a more stable kickstand for tabletop play, a LAN port, and an upgraded 64GB of internal storage. It's the classic Nintendo Switch, but better.
