Shigeru Miyamoto and Other Nintendo Directors’ Salaries Are Much Lower Than Other Industry Execs

The now departed Reggie Fils-Aimé and Shigeru Miyamoto are two of the most iconic and well known Nintendo executives of all time. Suffice it to say, Nintendo’s head honchos earn significantly less than other company executives in the gaming industry.

Nintendo’s annual report for the fical year ending March 31, 2020 lists off exactly how much each of the top three executives were paid respectively. President of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa himself is even listed on the 76 page financial report, alongside both Shinya Takahashi (Nintendo’s general manager of planning and development) and Shigeru Miyamoto. Each’s total earnings for the entire fiscal year are included.

Being the president of the company, it makes sense that Shuntaro Furukawa would earn the most, but the numbers that each exec take home might surprise you.

You might remember that last year, gamesindustry.biz reported that Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision, brought home $28,698,375 – this is 306x more than the average Activision staff member makes per year. And what about CEO of EA, Andrew Wilson, whose annual earnings were $35,728,764 – being roughly 371x the average EA employee’s earnings.

Keep in mind that for these numbers to be actualized, the shareholders of those companies have to vote in favor. In both cases, there was nearly a 90%+ approval vote.

These numbers are a stark comparison to that of the paychecks over at Nintendo.

Shuntaro Furukawa earned $2.4M ($0.73M base salary + $1.67M bonus)

Shigeru Miyamoto earned $1.8M ($0.67M base salary + $1.13M bonus)

Shinya Takahashi earned $1.24M ($0.11M base salary + $1.13M bonus)

All three directors clearly are paid handsomely for their work, but this shines a spotlight on the vast difference between how Nintendo approaches these matters and how other companies go about it.

Some might argue that there are clear cultural differences at play here. For example, Satoru Iwata cut his own pay by 50% in 2014 when Nintendo decided to markdown the price of the 3DS. Regardless of the reasoning as to why, it still is interesting to see how much these top executives at Nintendo are being paid with such massive success that the Switch has seen.

The modesty that Nintendo and their executives continue to show is highly respectable, but I wouldn’t be against giving old Shigeru Miyamoto a pay raise for refusing to go the way of microtransactions.