24 ms·

Nintendo Will Pay Its Workers 10% More

523 points by ossusermivami 4y ago

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Higher worker pay, lower profits, and no mass layoffs. The Welch acolytes are yelling in horror in NYC.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  Average annual salary across all full-time roles is $75k (about $80k with bonuses). Entry-level roles pay $1,600-$2,000/month. Welch acolytes calm down quickly, then seethe with envy. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/jobs/recruit/requirements/index.html https://www.nintendo.co.jp/jobs/recruit/requirements/index.h...
  - falcolas 4y ago
    - Consumer Prices in San Francisco, CA are 37.4% higher than in Tokyo (without rent) - Consumer Prices Including Rent in San Francisco, CA are 79.3% higher than in Tokyo - Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 178.4% higher than in Tokyo - Average pay for a Sr. Software Developer is around $58k in Tokyo $75k would probably be comfortable to live on. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Japan&city1=Tokyo&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... https://www.payscale.com/research/JP/Location=Tokyo/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/JP/Location=Tokyo/Salary
    - aikinai 4y ago
      Nintendo is in Kyoto (though they have a few Tokyo satellites). And many employees commute from neighbouring towns or prefectures, so it actually strengthens your point. Expenses will be massively cheaper.
    - trynewideas 4y ago
      $75k might. $25k as an entry-level with a doctorate wouldn't.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
goldemerald 4y ago
I am at loss towards the tech-landscape right now. A year ago, everyone was talking about hot the market was and how you could easily switch jobs for a 40% raise. Now all the megacorps are doing lay-offs and here comes Nintendo with the opposite approach. Why are the business decisions between Ninendo and the tech-giants so different? Would anyone have been surprised to see "Nintendo will lay of 10% of its workers" ?
- philip1209 4y ago
  I believe labor costs are generally much lower in Japan.
  - kxrm 4y ago
    Yup and the PM of Japan is asking companies to pay more. Nintendo is answering the call. > As inflation continues to hit the global market, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida urged companies to pay more to offset the rising cost of living. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said, "It's important for our long-term growth to secure our workforce."
    - Alupis 4y ago
      > Yup and the PM of Japan is asking companies to pay more. Nintendo is answering the call It's never as simple as that. Toeing the party's line to help re-elect some politician isn't what has made Nintendo a lasting enterprise spanning 133 years of existence.
  - loeg 4y ago
    Like, by a huge factor, at least according to Patio11. Think like 2-6x lower. A 10% raise on that is relatively significant, but does not get you close to US dev compensation.
- thinknubpad 4y ago
  Could it be the same mentality as a copycat crime? When a corporate executive sees a competitor decimate themselves without facing immediate consequences, they start to think that they could probably get away with it, too.
O__________O 4y ago
Wish there was a way for customers to opt-in increasing the percentage they paid for a product or service from a company in a way that any employees directly tied to the related service or product received the money. Only thing is that if the company had access to the data and amounts paid, they would simply increase the cost of the related service or product.
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  No, we don't need even more tip culture. It's just a way for capital to avoid paying wages.
  - O__________O 4y ago
    It’s the opposite. Customers avoid paying employees by outsourcing the work to companies. Customers, not companies, are the ultimate beneficiaries of their labor. Corporations are a be definition design to extract value from employees and customers, pretending otherwise is nothing more than wishful thinking.
    - hamandcheese 4y ago
      > Customers, not companies, are the ultimate beneficiaries of their labor. This is plain wrong. Capital is the one making a profit off of labor, not consumers. And capital frequently tries to extract further benefit at the expense of labor and consumers (like shifting wages to tips).
      - O__________O 4y ago
        Short of consumers with no choice but to consume their services and products via monopolies, it’s obvious consumers do control the means of profits, not the companies that provide them. If consumers (or employees) and not companies are empowered to leverage that control is the subject of the thread. Assumption that companies must exist in capitalism is just that, an assumption.
- 4y ago
nickpeterson 4y ago
I’ve always heard that Japanese software developers were very poorly paid compared to their us counterparts. This 10% might be pretty terrible if your peers received large raises for years beforehand. I do feel like something is off with Nintendo, their games seem very scarce recently. Either they’re launching a new system this year at e3 or Covid really messed up their dev practices.
- ronyeh 4y ago
  The last time they launched a big Zelda game, it was pushed to two consoles (Switch and the previous gen Wii U). So maybe you're right. The next Zelda is coming in several months.
  - BudaDude 4y ago
    This is also true of Zelda Twilight Princess. It released on the Gamecube and the Wii. Nintendo has a history of launching consoles with the newest Zelda game.
  - kevinventullo 4y ago
    I’m not so sure. The new Zelda appears to use the exact same engine as the previous one.
    - TillE 4y ago
      Doesn't really tell us anything. It's a lot easier to port an engine vs writing a new one from scratch, especially if the new system is also just an ARM64 processor with an NVIDIA GPU.
      - bogwog 4y ago
        Does Nvidia still make mobile GPUs? Tegra was a flop afaik, which is why Nintendo picked it, since they could buy whole container ships of them for cheap. What’s a relatively modern SOC that sold poorly and was manufactured in large volumes? That’s probably what the next Nintedo console will use.
voytec 4y ago
For a good moment I thought that it was "gamestop" not "gamespot".
zabzonk 4y ago
well, somebody must be making money at nintendo, and i hope it is the devs. the price of games on the switch is just silly.
- tjpnz 4y ago
  You get what you pay for at least with the first party titles. The game is in a playable state from day one, they don't nickel and dime players and their games are actually fun.
mdtrooper 4y ago
And for the open source projects (that they uses for free)?: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/ https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/
- imgabe 4y ago
  They will also get 10% more
manuelabeledo 4y ago
Nintendo has been historically notorious for making more money per employee than most companies [0]. 10% is a step in the right direction, but it should definitely be more. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/9d9624a4-8341-11dd-907e-000077b07658 https://www.ft.com/content/9d9624a4-8341-11dd-907e-000077b07...
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  Couldn’t get archive.org to get the content for your article, unfortunately. Anyways, I’m not sure that this is the right metric to criticize a company, at least not without corroborating metrics. Two main questions I’d be interested before casting judgement are: What did they do with the excess monies they had from their large profit:compensation ratio? Were they paying above market rate for their industry? I do see how my response betrays my assumption that profits do not always need to be shared with the labor pool that generated/oversaw the period of profits. That’s something I’m chewing on, personally.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Mostly, I believe Nintendo has about 20 years (not sure of the exact amount, a ridiculous number anyway) of operating costs in savings. If they stopped selling anything tomorrow they’d still be good for a few decades.
    - kranke155 4y ago
      20 years in savings is astonishing.
      - tobyjsullivan 4y ago
        A human with 20 years of savings would just be considered financially sound and (barely) safe to retire. Yet a business with over 6,000 employees with the same financial security is exceptional. Perhaps there’s something to learn here.
Waterluvian 4y ago
Speaking of keeping up with inflation: AAA video games have been $59.99 for like fifteen years. Sony has been flirting with finally inflation correcting this and a lot of people freaked out for some reason. I wonder if 2023 will be the year this takes hold.
- Analemma_ 4y ago
  Yeah, I hate price hikes as much as anybody, but the fact that gamers pitch a fit if anyone contemplates moving the magic $60 price point is not sustainable. In real terms, games have been getting 2-3% cheaper every year for like two decades, with a huge cut this year due to inflation. It has to move eventually.
  - nocsi 4y ago
    Why? Games are easier to develop today than they’ve ever been. The only class of game that can push the $69.99 envelope are those making AAA games. Games and movies are the two cheapest forms of entertainment. They’re not going to mess with the formula, especially since both these industries do really well in a depression
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      Indeed it may be a shrewd business decision to effectively cut prices. But no other industry is expected to cut prices due to economies of scale.
    - p1necone 4y ago
      > Why? Games are easier to develop today than they’ve ever been. The only class of game that can push the $69.99 envelope are those making AAA games. Nobody is selling indie games for $60/$69.99 (except maybe physical releases to cover manufacturing costs, and collectors edition type stuff). The barrier for entry may be lower, but AAA game development costs are massively higher now than they were ~10+ years ago.
    - Insanity 4y ago
      making games is easier but they grew in scope. Also, wouldn't books be cheaper for entertainment?
propter_hoc 4y ago
Game devs are the worst paid devs of any industry. Japanese salarymen are worse paid than FTEs in almost any highly developed economy. I wouldn't really expect that after this raise, Nintendo employees end up being paid particularly well.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >Japanese salarymen are worse paid than FTEs in almost any highly developed economy. I find this obsession with instantaneous salary to be odd. In my mind, you're best off working toward total lifetime earnings, optimizing for stability. Sure it's nice to be making six figures at some startup. But that means nothing over a 10 year period interspersed with layoffs and periods of unemployment. As an American, I'd take the salaryman deal any day of the week over making a bit more and waking up every single day wondering if I'll be fired.
  - mym1990 4y ago
    What is instantaneous salary? Seems like a contradiction. Saying that making a decent wage "means nothing" in the long run is just plain wrong. Higher earning, especially early in one's career has massive financial impact down the road. White collar jobs are actually really stable, and during recessions you see a lot of blue collar work tank(such as jobs in the service industry). Obviously this could change and we are currently going through some of that but if you're waking up every morning for the past 10 years wondering if you'll be fired, that seems to be a bit irrational(unless you're actively doing something that will get you fired). You romanticize the salaryman title, but I am not sure you know what the actual lifestyle is...for most people in developed countries outside of Japan, working 12-14+ hours for low pay is not a good "deal".
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - mattigames 4y ago
    You mean like that employee Justin Moore that was fired by Google after 16 years throuhg an automated e-mail? [0] Or like that guy on reddit that lost 20 years of life-savings in just 5 months because their spouse got cancer?[1] Also current generations saw the retirement age go from 60 in 1995 to 67 and if Republicans get their way it will be 70 or higher, less than a decade shy of the average death age. Please, people would optimize for stability if it looked like a feasiable goal, but at this point is just a fantasy like Santa Claus, I'm glad that it has worked this far for you but don't assume other people could be so lucky. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/engineer-laid-off-over-16-104711925.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/engineer-laid-off-over-16-104... [1] https://i.imgur.com/GbNcdKc.png https://i.imgur.com/GbNcdKc.png
krazii 4y ago
I thought raising wages was not what you want to do to fight inflation?
- mempko 4y ago
  Raising wages doesn't increase inflation, it's raising prices to customers.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Raising wages _can_ increase inflation because the workers will use them to buy more goods, which might be supply limited. But Japan's inflation problem is that they don't have enough of it, so that's fine…
    - mempko 4y ago
      Right, but limited supply doesn't have to mean raising prices. That decision is done by management and business owners. It's not an automatic kind of outcome, but a deliberate one.
- bloodyplonker22 4y ago
  It's just another basic economic effect of having too much money supply in the system. Governments printing too much money at a fast rate is the core reason of why inflation happens.
icelancer 4y ago
Wouldn't be a HN thread about pay increases without someone saying it's not enough.
- hawthornio 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - icelancer 4y ago
    There is no amount Nintendo could have raised salaries that would have avoided the GP comment, is the point. >> In any event, based on increases in productivity since the 80s all workers should be making at least double their salary. This is happening. It's just happening to the people who are the most productive. There is no reason productivity gains would naturally be equally distributed amongst all workers, nor the wage gains. If you are a developer, you are partially responsible for this inequality in both pay and productivity. They tend to go hand in hand. Now, if you want to argue that software developers are underpaid, I certainly agree. But we're also part of the inequality problem, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
    - random314 4y ago
      > This is happening. It's just happening to the people who are the most productive Then why is the increased average productivity not reflected in increased average income?
      - icelancer 4y ago
        Because they're eliminating the jobs of the least productive people and not paying the most productive people equivalent to the productivity gains, i.e. software developers and the technical folk. But those people are still getting paid heaps, so there aren't a lot of complaints.
        random314 4y ago
mesh 4y ago
The economist has an article this week that discusses this on a broader Japanese economic level: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/01/31/is-there-a-fix-for-japans-markets-mess https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/01/31/i... >Japanese firms have long been reluctant to raise pay. But in the face of protracted inflation, leaders have begun to change their tune. Keidanren, Japan’s business federation, has urged members to give consideration to rising prices. Some multinationals and big regional firms promise hefty pay increases. Fast Retailing, parent company of Uniqlo, a clothing giant, announced raises as high as 40%; Higo Bank, a lender in Japan’s south, plans to lift base salaries by 3%, the first such rise in 28 years. The question is whether the smaller firms that employ 70% of Japanese workers will follow suit.
bane 4y ago
The videogame market is absolutely astonishing right now. When I was a kid there was lots of discussion if there was even room for two major consoles on the market. The combined systems moved for the SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, and the TurboGrafx-16 is less than Wii moved by itself (90m combined vs 101m for the Wii). Here's the rundown today: 1. Nintendo: A playing card company that became a toy company that now makes video games. Has both the currently most popular handheld (the 3DS) on the market, but also the most popular console/handheld on the market (Switch). Of the top-10 highest selling consoles of all time, Nintendo alone has half of them (if you count the Gameboy and GBC as a single console). They've managed to have a top-selling system in every decade since the 1980s and have overcome misses like the WiiU and the GameCube without missing a beat. Their current console (Switch) is fantastically underpowered for the generation, basically a cheap Android tablet. Though not yet the all-time most sold console, it's expected to overtake the PS2 before retiring as sales are still ridiculously strong despite competing against systems many times as powerful. Between the 3DS, Switch, Games, and licensing, Nintendo's revenue for 2022 was ~$14 billion dollars, net at ~$4b Nintendo has an e-store, but zero cloud gaming strategy. 2. Sony: A classic Japanese electronics giant that makes every kind of consumer electronics imaginable. Entered the console market after being insulted by Nintendo during the 90s, now arguably the second closest hegemon of the industry after Nintendo. Capable of producing incredibly exotic, but powerful, hardware -- every home console Sony has put out since the original Playstation and the current PS5 is in the current top-10 most sold. The PS2 is the all time winner. Sony's handhelds haven't faired as well, while the Playstation Portable was a relative hit (and still popular among home brew enthusiasts today), the follow-up Vita was a relative failure, prompting Sony to pull from the portable market. Sony is the only major console maker to get into VR. Sony proper revenued ~$81b, but Sony Interactive (the division that does games) made $20.75b, but net at $2.6b in 2021. Sony has an e-store, and you can play a decent library of recent games over the cloud. 3. Microsoft: Another absolute monster of a company. The history of the Xbox is fascinating (there's an interesting quasi-advertisement documentary on youtube about it), but it's basically a rouge operation that's allowed to survive because it makes money. Totally against prevailing corporate DNA, the systems have performed very well, but not industry leading, since launch. The Xbox 360 is the only system to crack the top-10, but the other systems have performed respectably. Microsoft has focused on M&A to build up a gaming lineup, but their systems have been treated like an infectious disease in some markets (notably Japan) limiting overall performance. Severe missteps in launch and marketing of the Xbox One probably sapped a not insignificant percentage of their possible growth. It's safe to say that the Microsoft Xbox division focuses heavily on the North American market first, while the Japanese systems see that market as second. Microsoft revenued $198.3b in 2022, Xbox made $15.56b of that. Microsoft does not seem to share net for the Xbox division. Microsoft is all in on the cloud. all in. 4. Valve: The massive dark horse that appears in the room when the power cuts out, covered in black smoke. A "pseudo" console platform company with Steam as their console. They focus mostly on being a channel/publisher for other games -- with various hardware and gaming software side businesses. They target existing PCs as the runtime engine, but try to enable users to access their games in various ways. Steam has a catalog of around 50,000 games. Here's the real astonishing numbers, if the PS2 is #1 selling console of all time with 155 million units sold, and the Switch has moved 122 million units so far...Steam sees around 200 million monthly active users as of 2023. The PS5 has sold around 32 million units, Steam sees around 75-80 million daily active users per day. Valve has recently entered the portable console space with their Steam Deck, which runs a custom Linux variant and a compatibility layer, capable of running AAA PC titles. It's estimated to have moved around a million units so far. Valve is also a major driver in the higher-end consumer VR market - one of the only true competitors to Meta. Valve does this with less than 1200 employees, yearly revenue is estimate to be around $13-15b. It's unknown what their net is, but it's expected that they are very profitable. Despite being fundamentally a cloud-based console, Valve does not have a cloud gaming offering where you can just sign in to some remote server with your account and start playing. Instead they've relied on external parties to provide those services like GeForce Now or Shadow. 5. Mobile: I won't spend time here other than to say that most people who are interested in console games consider this a different segment in the way that people interested in Movies think of TV and Radio as different segments. Mobile gaming is huge, can make massive money, but is very hit driven and home to a huge predatory "free to play" industry. 6. Meta I'll spend even less time here. But basically Zuckerberg traded a dominant, highly profitable, but fading, $116b company for a company that focused on moving fewer platform units than the PlayStation Vita. Great consumer tech, some great games and experiences, but kind of a user mess. Here's some things that are clear at this point in the generation: - Nintendo could probably release a Switch II with considerably better specs at any time, but has no reason to as the Switch is selling like hotcakes, and making unreal profits for the company. - Nintendo appears to make around 30% profit, the highest of the 3 major hardware makers (Sony about 10-13%, Microsoft is unknown, but their M&A rate is crazy). It's guessed that Valve makes more than any of the above. - The supply chain is choking the high end systems from Sony and Microsoft, and this was before the pandemic. The PS5 was released in 2020 and is still hard to find on store shelves. If you can't move systems, you can't move games. - Valve has had an incredible year. The Steam Deck is a hit in early gaming circles, largely delivers on promises, is a relatively open platform, and open to customization. Steam dominates its perceived market (game launchers), but also may secretly be one of the largest gaming platforms on the planet. Cheap (<$300) PCs are appearing that can run an almost impossibly large library of games and Valve has been an incredible steward of individual gamers' purchased libraries. - Nintendo has bizarrely embraced the Indy scene, something only Valve has really done. It's a perfect fit for the lower powered Switch. - Mobile gaming didn't eat console games -- in fact some pundits are saying the mobile gaming industry has "collapsed". And gaming is now a much larger industry than movies and TV combined. - Meta isn't even in the top-20 of platform units sold. Bottom line, Nintendo is one of the smaller players in the industry, but makes lots of money, the giants are struggling to fill channel demand with their platform, and Valve may eventually just overtake them all in the end. Basically Nintendo employees deserve some extra spending money because they're among the best on the planet.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
nintendon't are only doing this because they have to. not because they want to.
deafpolygon 4y ago
For those talking about cartridge games being 60-70 bucks back in the 90's, don't forget that half the cost was just simply to make the games - to literally print the game cartridges and the chips it used to make them was half the cost of the price-tag. Let's not forget royalty fees and publisher costs on top of that. It's much cheaper nowadays, and even cheaper as more and more games are being sold digitally and discs cost pennies to the dollar to print.
- throwntoday 4y ago
  Nintendo only sells one device now, the switch, and it still uses cartridges. Granted the carts are literally just a flash chip.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    Some say XtraROM is used for Switch game cartridges, but what is this chip? PROM or just high endurance write-once Flash?
    - deafpolygon 4y ago
      for the Switch they are using non-volatile flash storage. Even though "ROM" is in the name, it's still a flash based storage (dubbed HybridFlash by Macronix). I read somewhere that their stated lifetime is ~20 years, which means they won't last nearly as long as their NES/SNES forebears.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sitkack 4y ago
Notice to Google, this is how its done.
- welder 4y ago
  No, the Japanese employees make almost nothing. Even 10% raise doesn't get them close to a base Google salary.
  - sitkack 4y ago
    Google (Larry and Sergey) nuked morale, half-decimated the workforce by choice, screwed over a tone of projects and saved negative money. Google could have pulled some big search energy and given everyone a raise and not noticed. Lost 5% of workforce, remaining workforce is easily working 10% less (something). Easily 15% down on throughput since Jan 19th. Regardless of how little Nintendo employees may make, giving a 10% raise while other tech titans are trading punching their employees in the shorts is a good move.
    - msm_ 4y ago
      I don't disagree, but I wonder why is everyone fixated on Google this much? For the past weeks almost every day brought the news of a big tech company letting go 10+% of a workforce. Most recently zoom fired 15%. My theory is that people (me included) still have this idealised view of Google as the "don't be evil" company that is somehow better morally than the others. So Google firing engineers is a shock, while Amazon firing even more people is just Tuesday. Curious what you think.
- pb7 4y ago
  Why did you single out Google?
ojhughes 4y ago
My Uncle is over the moon after hearing this news
phendrenad2 4y ago
This is the pendulum swinging back after cost-of-living increases due to inflation. Expect lots of other companies to quietly do raises. I'm already seeing that recruiter spam in my inbox is quoting 30-40%(!) more for senior roles than they were 4 years ago.

523 points by ossusermivami 4y ago

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Higher worker pay, lower profits, and no mass layoffs. The Welch acolytes are yelling in horror in NYC.

trynewideas 4y ago
Average annual salary across all full-time roles is $75k (about $80k with bonuses). Entry-level roles pay $1,600-$2,000/month. Welch acolytes calm down quickly, then seethe with envy. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/jobs/recruit/requirements/index.html https://www.nintendo.co.jp/jobs/recruit/requirements/index.h...
- falcolas 4y ago
  - Consumer Prices in San Francisco, CA are 37.4% higher than in Tokyo (without rent) - Consumer Prices Including Rent in San Francisco, CA are 79.3% higher than in Tokyo - Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 178.4% higher than in Tokyo - Average pay for a Sr. Software Developer is around $58k in Tokyo $75k would probably be comfortable to live on. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Japan&city1=Tokyo&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... https://www.payscale.com/research/JP/Location=Tokyo/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/JP/Location=Tokyo/Salary
  - aikinai 4y ago
    Nintendo is in Kyoto (though they have a few Tokyo satellites). And many employees commute from neighbouring towns or prefectures, so it actually strengthens your point. Expenses will be massively cheaper.
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    $75k might. $25k as an entry-level with a doctorate wouldn't.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

goldemerald 4y ago

I am at loss towards the tech-landscape right now. A year ago, everyone was talking about hot the market was and how you could easily switch jobs for a 40% raise. Now all the megacorps are doing lay-offs and here comes Nintendo with the opposite approach. Why are the business decisions between Ninendo and the tech-giants so different? Would anyone have been surprised to see "Nintendo will lay of 10% of its workers" ?

philip1209 4y ago
I believe labor costs are generally much lower in Japan.
- kxrm 4y ago
  Yup and the PM of Japan is asking companies to pay more. Nintendo is answering the call. > As inflation continues to hit the global market, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida urged companies to pay more to offset the rising cost of living. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said, "It's important for our long-term growth to secure our workforce."
  - Alupis 4y ago
    > Yup and the PM of Japan is asking companies to pay more. Nintendo is answering the call It's never as simple as that. Toeing the party's line to help re-elect some politician isn't what has made Nintendo a lasting enterprise spanning 133 years of existence.
- loeg 4y ago
  Like, by a huge factor, at least according to Patio11. Think like 2-6x lower. A 10% raise on that is relatively significant, but does not get you close to US dev compensation.
thinknubpad 4y ago
Could it be the same mentality as a copycat crime? When a corporate executive sees a competitor decimate themselves without facing immediate consequences, they start to think that they could probably get away with it, too.

O__________O 4y ago

Wish there was a way for customers to opt-in increasing the percentage they paid for a product or service from a company in a way that any employees directly tied to the related service or product received the money. Only thing is that if the company had access to the data and amounts paid, they would simply increase the cost of the related service or product.

hamandcheese 4y ago
No, we don't need even more tip culture. It's just a way for capital to avoid paying wages.
- O__________O 4y ago
  It’s the opposite. Customers avoid paying employees by outsourcing the work to companies. Customers, not companies, are the ultimate beneficiaries of their labor. Corporations are a be definition design to extract value from employees and customers, pretending otherwise is nothing more than wishful thinking.
  - hamandcheese 4y ago
    > Customers, not companies, are the ultimate beneficiaries of their labor. This is plain wrong. Capital is the one making a profit off of labor, not consumers. And capital frequently tries to extract further benefit at the expense of labor and consumers (like shifting wages to tips).
    - O__________O 4y ago
      Short of consumers with no choice but to consume their services and products via monopolies, it’s obvious consumers do control the means of profits, not the companies that provide them. If consumers (or employees) and not companies are empowered to leverage that control is the subject of the thread. Assumption that companies must exist in capitalism is just that, an assumption.
4y ago

nickpeterson 4y ago

I’ve always heard that Japanese software developers were very poorly paid compared to their us counterparts. This 10% might be pretty terrible if your peers received large raises for years beforehand. I do feel like something is off with Nintendo, their games seem very scarce recently. Either they’re launching a new system this year at e3 or Covid really messed up their dev practices.

ronyeh 4y ago
The last time they launched a big Zelda game, it was pushed to two consoles (Switch and the previous gen Wii U). So maybe you're right. The next Zelda is coming in several months.
- BudaDude 4y ago
  This is also true of Zelda Twilight Princess. It released on the Gamecube and the Wii. Nintendo has a history of launching consoles with the newest Zelda game.
- kevinventullo 4y ago
  I’m not so sure. The new Zelda appears to use the exact same engine as the previous one.
  - TillE 4y ago
    Doesn't really tell us anything. It's a lot easier to port an engine vs writing a new one from scratch, especially if the new system is also just an ARM64 processor with an NVIDIA GPU.
    - bogwog 4y ago
      Does Nvidia still make mobile GPUs? Tegra was a flop afaik, which is why Nintendo picked it, since they could buy whole container ships of them for cheap. What’s a relatively modern SOC that sold poorly and was manufactured in large volumes? That’s probably what the next Nintedo console will use.

voytec 4y ago

For a good moment I thought that it was "gamestop" not "gamespot".

zabzonk 4y ago

well, somebody must be making money at nintendo, and i hope it is the devs. the price of games on the switch is just silly.

tjpnz 4y ago
You get what you pay for at least with the first party titles. The game is in a playable state from day one, they don't nickel and dime players and their games are actually fun.

mdtrooper 4y ago

And for the open source projects (that they uses for free)?: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/ https://www.nintendo.co.jp/support/oss/

imgabe 4y ago
They will also get 10% more

manuelabeledo 4y ago

Nintendo has been historically notorious for making more money per employee than most companies [0]. 10% is a step in the right direction, but it should definitely be more. [0] https://www.ft.com/content/9d9624a4-8341-11dd-907e-000077b07658 https://www.ft.com/content/9d9624a4-8341-11dd-907e-000077b07...

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
Couldn’t get archive.org to get the content for your article, unfortunately. Anyways, I’m not sure that this is the right metric to criticize a company, at least not without corroborating metrics. Two main questions I’d be interested before casting judgement are: What did they do with the excess monies they had from their large profit:compensation ratio? Were they paying above market rate for their industry? I do see how my response betrays my assumption that profits do not always need to be shared with the labor pool that generated/oversaw the period of profits. That’s something I’m chewing on, personally.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Mostly, I believe Nintendo has about 20 years (not sure of the exact amount, a ridiculous number anyway) of operating costs in savings. If they stopped selling anything tomorrow they’d still be good for a few decades.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    20 years in savings is astonishing.
    - tobyjsullivan 4y ago
      A human with 20 years of savings would just be considered financially sound and (barely) safe to retire. Yet a business with over 6,000 employees with the same financial security is exceptional. Perhaps there’s something to learn here.

Waterluvian 4y ago

Speaking of keeping up with inflation: AAA video games have been $59.99 for like fifteen years. Sony has been flirting with finally inflation correcting this and a lot of people freaked out for some reason. I wonder if 2023 will be the year this takes hold.

Analemma_ 4y ago
Yeah, I hate price hikes as much as anybody, but the fact that gamers pitch a fit if anyone contemplates moving the magic $60 price point is not sustainable. In real terms, games have been getting 2-3% cheaper every year for like two decades, with a huge cut this year due to inflation. It has to move eventually.
- nocsi 4y ago
  Why? Games are easier to develop today than they’ve ever been. The only class of game that can push the $69.99 envelope are those making AAA games. Games and movies are the two cheapest forms of entertainment. They’re not going to mess with the formula, especially since both these industries do really well in a depression
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Indeed it may be a shrewd business decision to effectively cut prices. But no other industry is expected to cut prices due to economies of scale.
  - p1necone 4y ago
    > Why? Games are easier to develop today than they’ve ever been. The only class of game that can push the $69.99 envelope are those making AAA games. Nobody is selling indie games for $60/$69.99 (except maybe physical releases to cover manufacturing costs, and collectors edition type stuff). The barrier for entry may be lower, but AAA game development costs are massively higher now than they were ~10+ years ago.
  - Insanity 4y ago
    making games is easier but they grew in scope. Also, wouldn't books be cheaper for entertainment?

propter_hoc 4y ago

Game devs are the worst paid devs of any industry. Japanese salarymen are worse paid than FTEs in almost any highly developed economy. I wouldn't really expect that after this raise, Nintendo employees end up being paid particularly well.

ramesh31 4y ago
>Japanese salarymen are worse paid than FTEs in almost any highly developed economy. I find this obsession with instantaneous salary to be odd. In my mind, you're best off working toward total lifetime earnings, optimizing for stability. Sure it's nice to be making six figures at some startup. But that means nothing over a 10 year period interspersed with layoffs and periods of unemployment. As an American, I'd take the salaryman deal any day of the week over making a bit more and waking up every single day wondering if I'll be fired.
- mym1990 4y ago
  What is instantaneous salary? Seems like a contradiction. Saying that making a decent wage "means nothing" in the long run is just plain wrong. Higher earning, especially early in one's career has massive financial impact down the road. White collar jobs are actually really stable, and during recessions you see a lot of blue collar work tank(such as jobs in the service industry). Obviously this could change and we are currently going through some of that but if you're waking up every morning for the past 10 years wondering if you'll be fired, that seems to be a bit irrational(unless you're actively doing something that will get you fired). You romanticize the salaryman title, but I am not sure you know what the actual lifestyle is...for most people in developed countries outside of Japan, working 12-14+ hours for low pay is not a good "deal".
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mattigames 4y ago
  You mean like that employee Justin Moore that was fired by Google after 16 years throuhg an automated e-mail? [0] Or like that guy on reddit that lost 20 years of life-savings in just 5 months because their spouse got cancer?[1] Also current generations saw the retirement age go from 60 in 1995 to 67 and if Republicans get their way it will be 70 or higher, less than a decade shy of the average death age. Please, people would optimize for stability if it looked like a feasiable goal, but at this point is just a fantasy like Santa Claus, I'm glad that it has worked this far for you but don't assume other people could be so lucky. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/engineer-laid-off-over-16-104711925.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/engineer-laid-off-over-16-104... [1] https://i.imgur.com/GbNcdKc.png https://i.imgur.com/GbNcdKc.png

krazii 4y ago

I thought raising wages was not what you want to do to fight inflation?

mempko 4y ago
Raising wages doesn't increase inflation, it's raising prices to customers.
- astrange 4y ago
  Raising wages _can_ increase inflation because the workers will use them to buy more goods, which might be supply limited. But Japan's inflation problem is that they don't have enough of it, so that's fine…
  - mempko 4y ago
    Right, but limited supply doesn't have to mean raising prices. That decision is done by management and business owners. It's not an automatic kind of outcome, but a deliberate one.
bloodyplonker22 4y ago
It's just another basic economic effect of having too much money supply in the system. Governments printing too much money at a fast rate is the core reason of why inflation happens.

icelancer 4y ago

Wouldn't be a HN thread about pay increases without someone saying it's not enough.

hawthornio 4y ago
[flagged]
- icelancer 4y ago
  There is no amount Nintendo could have raised salaries that would have avoided the GP comment, is the point. >> In any event, based on increases in productivity since the 80s all workers should be making at least double their salary. This is happening. It's just happening to the people who are the most productive. There is no reason productivity gains would naturally be equally distributed amongst all workers, nor the wage gains. If you are a developer, you are partially responsible for this inequality in both pay and productivity. They tend to go hand in hand. Now, if you want to argue that software developers are underpaid, I certainly agree. But we're also part of the inequality problem, and pretending otherwise would be silly.
  - random314 4y ago
    > This is happening. It's just happening to the people who are the most productive Then why is the increased average productivity not reflected in increased average income?
    - icelancer 4y ago
      Because they're eliminating the jobs of the least productive people and not paying the most productive people equivalent to the productivity gains, i.e. software developers and the technical folk. But those people are still getting paid heaps, so there aren't a lot of complaints.
      - random314 4y ago

mesh 4y ago

The economist has an article this week that discusses this on a broader Japanese economic level: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/01/31/is-there-a-fix-for-japans-markets-mess https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/01/31/i... >Japanese firms have long been reluctant to raise pay. But in the face of protracted inflation, leaders have begun to change their tune. Keidanren, Japan’s business federation, has urged members to give consideration to rising prices. Some multinationals and big regional firms promise hefty pay increases. Fast Retailing, parent company of Uniqlo, a clothing giant, announced raises as high as 40%; Higo Bank, a lender in Japan’s south, plans to lift base salaries by 3%, the first such rise in 28 years. The question is whether the smaller firms that employ 70% of Japanese workers will follow suit.

bane 4y ago

The videogame market is absolutely astonishing right now. When I was a kid there was lots of discussion if there was even room for two major consoles on the market. The combined systems moved for the SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, and the TurboGrafx-16 is less than Wii moved by itself (90m combined vs 101m for the Wii). Here's the rundown today: 1. Nintendo: A playing card company that became a toy company that now makes video games. Has both the currently most popular handheld (the 3DS) on the market, but also the most popular console/handheld on the market (Switch). Of the top-10 highest selling consoles of all time, Nintendo alone has half of them (if you count the Gameboy and GBC as a single console). They've managed to have a top-selling system in every decade since the 1980s and have overcome misses like the WiiU and the GameCube without missing a beat. Their current console (Switch) is fantastically underpowered for the generation, basically a cheap Android tablet. Though not yet the all-time most sold console, it's expected to overtake the PS2 before retiring as sales are still ridiculously strong despite competing against systems many times as powerful. Between the 3DS, Switch, Games, and licensing, Nintendo's revenue for 2022 was ~$14 billion dollars, net at ~$4b Nintendo has an e-store, but zero cloud gaming strategy. 2. Sony: A classic Japanese electronics giant that makes every kind of consumer electronics imaginable. Entered the console market after being insulted by Nintendo during the 90s, now arguably the second closest hegemon of the industry after Nintendo. Capable of producing incredibly exotic, but powerful, hardware -- every home console Sony has put out since the original Playstation and the current PS5 is in the current top-10 most sold. The PS2 is the all time winner. Sony's handhelds haven't faired as well, while the Playstation Portable was a relative hit (and still popular among home brew enthusiasts today), the follow-up Vita was a relative failure, prompting Sony to pull from the portable market. Sony is the only major console maker to get into VR. Sony proper revenued ~$81b, but Sony Interactive (the division that does games) made $20.75b, but net at $2.6b in 2021. Sony has an e-store, and you can play a decent library of recent games over the cloud. 3. Microsoft: Another absolute monster of a company. The history of the Xbox is fascinating (there's an interesting quasi-advertisement documentary on youtube about it), but it's basically a rouge operation that's allowed to survive because it makes money. Totally against prevailing corporate DNA, the systems have performed very well, but not industry leading, since launch. The Xbox 360 is the only system to crack the top-10, but the other systems have performed respectably. Microsoft has focused on M&A to build up a gaming lineup, but their systems have been treated like an infectious disease in some markets (notably Japan) limiting overall performance. Severe missteps in launch and marketing of the Xbox One probably sapped a not insignificant percentage of their possible growth. It's safe to say that the Microsoft Xbox division focuses heavily on the North American market first, while the Japanese systems see that market as second. Microsoft revenued $198.3b in 2022, Xbox made $15.56b of that. Microsoft does not seem to share net for the Xbox division. Microsoft is all in on the cloud. all in. 4. Valve: The massive dark horse that appears in the room when the power cuts out, covered in black smoke. A "pseudo" console platform company with Steam as their console. They focus mostly on being a channel/publisher for other games -- with various hardware and gaming software side businesses. They target existing PCs as the runtime engine, but try to enable users to access their games in various ways. Steam has a catalog of around 50,000 games. Here's the real astonishing numbers, if the PS2 is #1 selling console of all time with 155 million units sold, and the Switch has moved 122 million units so far...Steam sees around 200 million monthly active users as of 2023. The PS5 has sold around 32 million units, Steam sees around 75-80 million daily active users per day. Valve has recently entered the portable console space with their Steam Deck, which runs a custom Linux variant and a compatibility layer, capable of running AAA PC titles. It's estimated to have moved around a million units so far. Valve is also a major driver in the higher-end consumer VR market - one of the only true competitors to Meta. Valve does this with less than 1200 employees, yearly revenue is estimate to be around $13-15b. It's unknown what their net is, but it's expected that they are very profitable. Despite being fundamentally a cloud-based console, Valve does not have a cloud gaming offering where you can just sign in to some remote server with your account and start playing. Instead they've relied on external parties to provide those services like GeForce Now or Shadow. 5. Mobile: I won't spend time here other than to say that most people who are interested in console games consider this a different segment in the way that people interested in Movies think of TV and Radio as different segments. Mobile gaming is huge, can make massive money, but is very hit driven and home to a huge predatory "free to play" industry. 6. Meta I'll spend even less time here. But basically Zuckerberg traded a dominant, highly profitable, but fading, $116b company for a company that focused on moving fewer platform units than the PlayStation Vita. Great consumer tech, some great games and experiences, but kind of a user mess. Here's some things that are clear at this point in the generation: - Nintendo could probably release a Switch II with considerably better specs at any time, but has no reason to as the Switch is selling like hotcakes, and making unreal profits for the company. - Nintendo appears to make around 30% profit, the highest of the 3 major hardware makers (Sony about 10-13%, Microsoft is unknown, but their M&A rate is crazy). It's guessed that Valve makes more than any of the above. - The supply chain is choking the high end systems from Sony and Microsoft, and this was before the pandemic. The PS5 was released in 2020 and is still hard to find on store shelves. If you can't move systems, you can't move games. - Valve has had an incredible year. The Steam Deck is a hit in early gaming circles, largely delivers on promises, is a relatively open platform, and open to customization. Steam dominates its perceived market (game launchers), but also may secretly be one of the largest gaming platforms on the planet. Cheap (<$300) PCs are appearing that can run an almost impossibly large library of games and Valve has been an incredible steward of individual gamers' purchased libraries. - Nintendo has bizarrely embraced the Indy scene, something only Valve has really done. It's a perfect fit for the lower powered Switch. - Mobile gaming didn't eat console games -- in fact some pundits are saying the mobile gaming industry has "collapsed". And gaming is now a much larger industry than movies and TV combined. - Meta isn't even in the top-20 of platform units sold. Bottom line, Nintendo is one of the smaller players in the industry, but makes lots of money, the giants are struggling to fill channel demand with their platform, and Valve may eventually just overtake them all in the end. Basically Nintendo employees deserve some extra spending money because they're among the best on the planet.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

nintendon't are only doing this because they have to. not because they want to.

deafpolygon 4y ago

For those talking about cartridge games being 60-70 bucks back in the 90's, don't forget that half the cost was just simply to make the games - to literally print the game cartridges and the chips it used to make them was half the cost of the price-tag. Let's not forget royalty fees and publisher costs on top of that. It's much cheaper nowadays, and even cheaper as more and more games are being sold digitally and discs cost pennies to the dollar to print.

throwntoday 4y ago
Nintendo only sells one device now, the switch, and it still uses cartridges. Granted the carts are literally just a flash chip.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Some say XtraROM is used for Switch game cartridges, but what is this chip? PROM or just high endurance write-once Flash?
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    for the Switch they are using non-volatile flash storage. Even though "ROM" is in the name, it's still a flash based storage (dubbed HybridFlash by Macronix). I read somewhere that their stated lifetime is ~20 years, which means they won't last nearly as long as their NES/SNES forebears.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

sitkack 4y ago

Notice to Google, this is how its done.

welder 4y ago
No, the Japanese employees make almost nothing. Even 10% raise doesn't get them close to a base Google salary.
- sitkack 4y ago
  Google (Larry and Sergey) nuked morale, half-decimated the workforce by choice, screwed over a tone of projects and saved negative money. Google could have pulled some big search energy and given everyone a raise and not noticed. Lost 5% of workforce, remaining workforce is easily working 10% less (something). Easily 15% down on throughput since Jan 19th. Regardless of how little Nintendo employees may make, giving a 10% raise while other tech titans are trading punching their employees in the shorts is a good move.
  - msm_ 4y ago
    I don't disagree, but I wonder why is everyone fixated on Google this much? For the past weeks almost every day brought the news of a big tech company letting go 10+% of a workforce. Most recently zoom fired 15%. My theory is that people (me included) still have this idealised view of Google as the "don't be evil" company that is somehow better morally than the others. So Google firing engineers is a shock, while Amazon firing even more people is just Tuesday. Curious what you think.
pb7 4y ago
Why did you single out Google?

ojhughes 4y ago

My Uncle is over the moon after hearing this news

phendrenad2 4y ago

This is the pendulum swinging back after cost-of-living increases due to inflation. Expect lots of other companies to quietly do raises. I'm already seeing that recruiter spam in my inbox is quoting 30-40%(!) more for senior roles than they were 4 years ago.