Nintendo CEO once halved his salary to prevent layoffs, and it worked

Nintendo never overhired during 2020-2021, for many of the US tech corps, even after big layoff wave, their employee count is still significant higher than 2020. So many hired 50% during 2020-2021.
 
IF i am not mistaken. All Nintendo CEOs are related to the family.

I could be wrong. but I do believe thats what was said before. they are related to the original owner of nintendo or under the same family tree or something like that. if thats the case. then it makes sense what the CEO is doing.

other companies? they are just employees.
 
//DEVIL// said:
IF i am not mistaken. All Nintendo CEOs are related to the family.

I could be wrong. but I do believe thats what was said before. they are related to the original owner of nintendo or under the same family tree or something like that. if thats the case. then it makes sense what the CEO is doing.

other companies? they are just employees.
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Iwata wasn't. The "family business" thing ended with Yamauchi.
 
What do you mean "it worked"? What does that mean?

He halved his salary because Nintendo lost money for 3 years straight and people were calling for him to resign. This was also during the multi-year period where Nintendo was facing relentless pressure to do business on smart devices, and Iwata was the #1 opponent to doing so, and he finally relented in 2014 after it was clear that 3DS was going to struggle just to do half of the business the DS did, and Wii U failed to gain any traction in the market at all even after 3D Mario, Mario Kart & Smash were all released on it.

Iwata oversaw two complete hardware launch failures in a row starting with 3DS and ending with Wii U, and yeah he was deeply involved in what would eventually become the Switch, but let's not pretend he was this religious-like golden leader who was just this amazing person. He had his strengths & weaknesses, just like anyone else. And yeah, he was charismatic and he certainly was responsible for Nintendo navigating the choppy waters during the boring era of 2003-2005, when GameCube wasn't doing well commercially, and Nintendo was getting absolutely annihilated on the home console side by Xbox and PS2. He saw that a GameCube 2.0 without any major innovations was poised to not do well against a PS3 and Xbox successor, unless they pivoted and did something new.

He was a visionary, for sure. But he certainly should not be credited for the salary cut thing. He deserved to take a salary cut, NIntendo was *losing money* for years under him from 2011-onward until 3DS started to take off. Honestly, if your company loses money for a whole year, you should not even get a salary. Not when you're the CEO. You make money when the company is profitable, you don't make money when it isn't.
 
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alucard0712_rus said:
Nintendo Europe? What is that? PR department?
Also PR in Switch era was different and waaaaay better than any PR before. WiiU is struggling because of everything PR so it's all for better and Switch proved it.
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Right. No one cares about Nintendo subsidiaries. Nintendo certainly doesn't lay off internal game development staff. Quite the opposite, even during Wii U they were always hiring and getting bigger, to increase their development capabilities. But subsidiary marketing/PR staff? Yeah those groups are never safe from consolidation or layoffs. NoA did a major re-org at the end of 2021 and got rid of their CA office and laid off a bunch of people.
 
The main benefit to a move like this is it lowers the operating cost, but it maintains the morale inside the company.

It's like leading an army. You have an advantage if you keep the soldiers riled up. If you lay off employees you get hit with less energized teams.
 
//DEVIL// said:
IF i am not mistaken. All Nintendo CEOs are related to the family.

I could be wrong. but I do believe thats what was said before. they are related to the original owner of nintendo or under the same family tree or something like that. if thats the case. then it makes sense what the CEO is doing.

other companies? they are just employees.
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No. This hasn't been true for 22 years.
 
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Astray said:
So PR people are fine to fire?
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I didn't say that. I just remember how misleading and awful Nintendo PR was in that time. Everyone (and GAF especially) made A LOT of jokes about that. Maybe Nintendo learnt from it and those lay-offs are direct consequences of that. Or maybe that was tough times for Nintendo just like now. Or both. But it's all my opinion/guess.
 
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For sure Nintendo have always been very reasonable on their growth and investments, and having a stable activity, people that stay in the company for years etc... All of this work towards making better quality products overall.

Of course everything isn't perfect, but they have great control over what they do, how they do it, and how to guarantee they are doing it right with a level of quality people will expect from them.

Their direction and communication are clear, people know what to expect as well on that regard.

You cannot even hope of reaching such stability on all regards with the chaotic approach MS have, obviously.
 
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cireza said:
For sure Nintendo have always been very reasonable on their growth and investments, and having a stable activity, people that stay in the company for years etc... All of this work towards making better quality products overall.

Of course everything isn't perfect, but they have great control over what they do, how they do it, and how to guarantee they are doing it right with a level of quality people will expect from them.

Their direction and communication are clear, people know what to expect as well on that regard.

You cannot even hope of reaching such stability on all regards with the chaotic approach MS have, obviously.
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Their growth has most been fairly steady (400 extra employees in the last year). But this could change when their new EPD building is finished.
 
So according to Reggie, because he halved is salary, they now have switch and theme parks? He apparently had plenty to spare...
Sounds like he could take another half off. Lol
 
Damn I miss Iwata.

That is all.
 
How much is Phil Spencer worth and how much is he paid by MS? Would it make a difference if he cut his wages by 50%?
 
IDKFA said:
How much is Phil Spencer worth and how much is he paid by MS? Would it make a difference if he cut his wages by 50%?
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It'd certainly make a difference if his wages were cut by 100%… 🤞
 
Most of these guys probably make 2-4 million a year before bonuses. Taking half to help out the employees should always be a no brainer.
 
ManaByte said:
Nintendo of Europe and temps working through a temp agency aren't the ones making the games, designing the Switch, and working on the movie.
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Most of the time these companies employ temps in EU because labor laws here send them screaming in terror.
Eg. last I checked, Apple's entire workforce in EU is non-permanent (and they also employ no managers).

It works great for quick layoffs - and apparently it has the double effect of getting internet defense force rise up to protect the poor companies whenever they must do these as well.
 
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Ms just gained $21 billions of benefit (not revenue) just this quarter. They don't have to cut high management salary, they could just invest less than a billion (less than 5% of quaterly benefit) to keep talented peoples. But they won't, people are expendable, bonus for shareholders are not.
 
Great guy, very capable. It was also an amazing gesture. However, I don't think he made enough money to make a difference in lay offs by cutting his salary in half.
 
Sounds like typical PR, but people are more open to it because they liked this CEO. Bobby Kotick also halved his salary. The less than $1 million saved could save some jobs, but very few.
 
Fafalada said:
Most of the time these companies employ temps in EU because labor laws here send them screaming in terror.
Eg. last I checked, Apple's entire workforce in EU is non-permanent (and they also employ no managers).

It works great for quick layoffs - and apparently it has the double effect of getting internet defense force rise up to protect the poor companies whenever they must do these as well.
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I was referring to the temp testers at NOA who tried to use internet outrage to force NOA into making them true red badge Nintendo employees. They got fired instead.
 
ManaByte said:
I was referring to the temp testers at NOA who tried to use internet outrage to force NOA into making them true red badge Nintendo employees. They got fired instead.
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A lot of them did become employees, so it worked for those ones.
 
Sure, it may have been mostly for good PR and company morale, but which would you rather have?

"CEO takes pay cut while avoiding layoffs"

or

"CEO increases own salary while laying off thousands of employees"
 
Zephyranthes said:
Sure, it may have been mostly for good PR and company morale, but which would you rather have?

"CEO takes pay cut while avoiding layoffs"

or

"CEO increases own salary while laying off thousands of employees"
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It's 100% for PR and staff morale, but some CEOs don't even care about that.

After Elon Musk's proposed $56 billion payday was rescinded by a Delaware judge, Tesla will be holding a vote at its AGM next month to reincorporate the company in Texas, where the vast bonus is unlikely to be overruled in court.
Meanwhile, Tesla is cutting 10% of its workforce, around 14,000 jobs.

Iwata was definitely one of the good guys!
 
Cutting the salaries in half was just a symbolic gesture and a punishment for fucking up badly, nothing more. It was a nice gesture, but by cutting his salary in half, Iwata nor anybody else of the board of directors did not save any jobs, because at no point during that time it was necessary to actually cut jobs or lower the salaries of other nintendo employees. As a company, Nintendo was very strong financially at that time (billions of dollars just in cash reserves, no depts, insane value assets, etc). You think halving the salaries of some of the board members (how much was that in total, 10 to 20 million at max maybe?) would have had an actual effect on anything?
 
Nintendo has devs worth keeping.... modern American studios have a LOT of fat that needs to be cut, as much as I love previous Arkane games.. I'm not sure the team that brought us Redfall needs to still exist.
 
JCK75 said:
Nintendo has devs worth keeping.... modern American studios have a LOT of fat that needs to be cut, as much as I love previous Arkane games.. I'm not sure the team that brought us Redfall needs to still exist.
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Should cut everyone with a hair outside of a natural color.
 
Iwata is/was the absolute best. He's too good for the industry. Dude had passion, heart and knowledge. Something no other higher up at any gaming company can likely mirror ever again, not even Nintendo. We were robbed by the illness.
 
Yeah no doubt the guy is top but when you already made/make multi-millions on your salary cutting it you still end up making multi-millions. Can't really relate to this fluff that keeps getting pushed.
 
To be clear, if you go back to the time Iwata did this in (and it happened multiple times during this period), Nintendo went from $100 million+ in annual profits during the Glory days of the DS/Wii era (2006-2009), to losing hundreds of millions a year during the short-lived Wii U era (2012-2015). Cutting his salary and some executive salaries for a couple years saved a tiny bit of money, sure, but the reason he didn't do lay-offs was because they were focused on the long-game. Who wants to work at a company where you're always worried you're going to be laid off because your company had a rough year. They needed those people to bring the Switch to life, to bring key Switch launch window games to life, to work on theme park attractions, to work on IP licensing such as bringing Mario to film. It's short-sided and ultimatelty harmful to your business to do snap lay-offs for short-term gains just to say you had a better year than you really did.

Ultimately, in the console business, now more then ever, you are only as good as your next hit title, and your next successful console. And yeah, Switch wouldn't be where it is right now, nearly on the cusp of becoming possibly the best-selling system of all time, if they had laid off a bunch of talent during the early 3DS days/ Wii U cycle.
 
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Ass of Can Whooping said:
Phil Spencer earns more than the CEO's of Sony and Nintendo combined

Let that sink in
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It's all about scale, to be honest. If you consider the size of Microsoft vs the relatively smaller Sony, and the much tinier Nintendo, this isn't surprising, nor is it unusual.

Sony has like ~100,000 employees. Nintendo only has ~7,500, and that's after their big hiring spree during the Switch cycle. Microsoft has like ~225,000 employees. It's just a monster-sized corporation.
 
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Ass of Can Whooping said:
It's fuck all to do with scale. It's about america and they're overcompensating executive culture.
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It's absolutely to do with scale, and yes, you are right to point out the American way of ridiculous over-compensation of executive staff, at the expense of front-line employees. It's all true. In the context of the size of Microsoft vs much smaller companies, though, it is important to know the context.
 
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