How much does Nintendo’s iconic chief creative officer Shigeru Miyamoto make? The answer can be found in the Japanese video game giant’s annual report for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. The document lists the Japanese company’s top five revenues for that period.
The latter’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa, tops the list with $2.51 million in revenue, followed by Shigeru Miyamoto ($2 million), Shinya Takahashi ($1.6 million), Satoru Shibata (1.2 million dollars) and Ko Shiota (910,000 dollars).
While one would expect these top executives to pocket higher salaries following the successes of Nintendo Switch and the movie Super Mario Bros, who did it best start ever for an animated film, the reality is quite different.
Income below that of industry experts.
Because if these sums seem miraculous to ordinary mortals, they are only a drop of water compared to what certain other leaders in the video game industry pocket each year.
According to a report published in 2022 by the economic intelligence company Games One, the highest paid CEOs in the video game industry received, in 2020, a remuneration almost 100 times that of the directors of Nintendo. In 2020, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, topped the ranking of the highest paid executives in the industry with $154 million, followed by Andrew Wilson, the head of Electronic Art, with $34.7 million.
The figures cited by Nintendo are even lower than those of rival Japanese companies in the same sector. Also according to this report, Yosuke Matsuda, CEO of Square Enix, the development studio behind the series of Final Fantasy, he received just over $4 million in 2020. For his part, Hajime Satomi, former CEO of Sega, earned around $3 million. In fact, whether it’s video games or the salary of its leaders, Nintendo cultivates its difference.
Source: BFM TV
