Nintendo slashes employee bonuses

Don't be the cow on the Wii U Nintendo. I have disposable income and generally buy new gaming systems that interest me. I have yet to see any games on the system aside from ZombieU that seem worth playing to me. I am all mario'd out. Unless he does something significantly different than try to save a princess with chronic kidnapping syndrome, what point is there to playing another Mario game? Here's an idea for a plot, Mario comes back to the planet/realm earth for the 1st time in 25 years and has an adventure here.

at least they're expected to return to profit in their next fiscal year and no one is losing their jobs. can't say the same about THQ or Sony

It''s Obama's fault!

If Activision had a difficult year, Bobby Kotick would probably lay-off 500 employees, give the remaining ones pay cuts, while giving himself a 50% pay increase for "managing a company during difficult times".

That and poor 3DS sales.

Too bad American executives don't take the high road.

Economic crisis? Or their games are not paying off like before?

It appears that the Wii U is going to be even that much more important to Nintendo's future than I first envisioned.  This, in my mind, is not a good thing.  I just don't see Nintendo having the crazy initial draw they did with the Wii.  I know too many family and friends who bought the Wii due to all the hype and quickly regretted it.  With that said, I truly hope they can do well as I really like them as a dev.

I'm not as huge a Nintendo fan as some of you, but I can admire any company where its board of directors and president take a pay cut *before* dishing one out to their employees.  At the company I work for we have it backwards, they give themselves bonuses and cut our pay.

All smart companies do exactly this. Especially if the execs are taking hits to pay, then no one can complain. Another reason I respect Nintendo as business first and a game company second.

Most companies that I know of in the Telecommunications market had to do the same thing this year. Its just because of tough economic times. Nothing really to do with it being Nintendo.

...I still find it unsettling to see Nintendo & Sony having so much financial trouble lately....

I know it has already been pointed out, but damn... I am impressed that the top dogs took a blow for once, instead of the lower leveled workers taking it, or even worse, being laid off.

Kudos to you Nintendo

Well....if Wii-U goes over like Wii did.....get ready for more of this. Their controller seems more like it will divide players than bring them closer together, griefing on a whole new scale brought to you by Wii-U. IDK, I miss NES and SNES........

Only in Japan will you see executives slashing their OWN pay by noticeable amounts for poor performance...

I think it's a good symbolic gesture to do this. Reality is that the amount of money they save is relatively insignificant. But it says to us that they're aware of the annual loss and says to the employees not to be complacent.

If 20 percent is a huge part of your bonus, then dare I say you are still ok.  I doubt the bonus is their primary income and if it is, then it's your fault for taking a job that depends on it.  I do have to say I doubt this is going to greatly impact the employees greatly.  The nice thing to see is that it started at the top and worked it's way down. 

I think the WII U is going to put a major hurt on them. I hope for the best for them because I really like NIntendo:(

If this was any other company they would have just laid off a bunch of people.

The only people I hear talking about Wii U are the Gamespot writers.

Best of luck to them.

While I would like to see them release cross platform I can applaud their behaviour in this regard.

Nintendumb...I'ma keep saying it. STOP WITH THE EXCLUSIVES! You have many amazing IP's that Xbox360, PS3, and PC, and PSP players would LOVE to play. Port some over and I can guarantee that you'll make boatloads of $$.

Interesting while Nintendo's employees have cuts in their salaries and bonuses, Sony which recently lost money, decides to layoff employees.

Say what you want about the Wii or the Nintendo lineup, executives taking that kind of paycut shows class. Why can't American companies in trouble do this?

I'm impressed by the Executives sticking by their pay cuts. Nintendo is doing it's best to get the company in order. After the 3DS launch which didn't quite pan out. Nintendo knows that they cannot afford to mess up the Wii U launch. These are tough times, Unlike Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo have nothing to fall back on. So great that the Excutives and staff of Nintendo are being mindful of finacial health of Nintendo.

Wow, the Execs took a pay cut? That would never happen in America.

I still think Nintendo should get rid of New Super Mario Bros. 2 there really just tryin to get easy cash from there consumers, which in other words there pulling a call of duty stunt, only Nintendo fans would be in denial to say two Mario Bros. games in one year is not greedy on Nintendo's part. NSMB2 could be easily delayed.

Still missing an important piece to make this article sympathetic... how much they'll still get? For example, if this means there bonus has dropped significantly that their living costs are in slight trouble then I shall sympathise, if it means that they would have to take a private helicopter to national conferences then private jets... then I do not care

So, is Nintendo an evil corporation yet? Because if this article said "Activision" or "EA" instead of "nintendo" there'd already be at least three comments about how greedy and horrible they are. Can we finally just admit Nintendo isn't the shining golden light of gaming?