Shuntaro Furukawa, president of a company valued at over $60 billion that has just released the most successful console in history, earned $2 million last year. For comparison: Bobby Kotick at the peak of his career at Activision Blizzard earned $155 million per year — 77 times more.
What the report revealed
In Nintendo's annual report for the 2026 financial year, the company disclosed compensation for four executives required to do so under Japanese law. Besides Furukawa ($2 million), the list includes Shigeru Miyamoto — creator of Mario and Zelda — at $1.54 million, Shin'ya Takahashi at $1.48 million (including base salary), and Satoru Shibata at $1.22 million. Combined — $6.24 million for four executives.
Nintendo converts these amounts from yen, and currency fluctuations affect the final figures. But even accounting for exchange rates, the gap with Western peers remains striking.
The scale of the gap
According to Spilled, in 2020 Kotick received $155 million — while a typical Activision employee earned only 0.3% of their CEO's salary. Nintendo Life recorded that Activision and EA CEOs at that time took home approximately $30 million each — more than 300 times what their average employee earned.
Nintendo stands out even among Japanese companies in this regard. According to GameSpot, Sega Sammy CEO Osamu Satori received ¥435 million (~$4.9 million), twice what Furukawa gets despite running a significantly smaller company.
"We'll turn our leaders into stars, and everyone will want to join us"
— a logic Nintendo has consistently avoided for three decades
The Iwata precedent — and why it matters
The philosophy of low executive compensation is not a new position. In 2014, then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata voluntarily cut his salary in half to avoid layoffs among rank-and-file employees during financial difficulties. This decision became corporate legend and effectively set the standard for his successors.
The result: according to Simply Wall St, Furukawa receives 29.7% as base salary and 70.3% as performance-based bonuses. This means risk is shared between management and the company, rather than shifted solely to shareholders.
What this gives and what it doesn't
- Team loyalty: the Reddit community's reaction to the disclosure is "surprisingly modest," reinforcing Nintendo's public image as a company where leaders are "in the same boat" as developers.
- The Miyamoto effect: the person who created Mario, Zelda, and Donkey Kong earns less than an average Microsoft vice president — and this generates no outrage within the company, which is itself a corporate phenomenon.
- However: low top management salaries do not guarantee a low gap with rank-and-file employees — Nintendo does not disclose detailed CEO-pay ratios, unlike American public companies.
Switch 2 is breaking pre-order records. If by the end of the 2026 financial year Nintendo shows record profits — it will become clear whether this philosophy of restraint will persist, or if shareholders will begin demanding "market rate" packages for executives, as has happened in most Japanese tech corporations entering the global market.
