Nintendo Reveals How Much Game Directors Like Shigeru Miyamoto Make

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Nintendo recently released its annual earnings report for the 2023 fiscal year to the public, and the report revealed how much the company's top directors and executives earn annually. The report initially listed the top five earners at Nintendo and their total amount of annual compensation in Japanese yen, which were later converted to US dollars to provide proper comparisons to other executives in the gaming industry.

The 2023 fiscal year in Japan ended on March 31, which was just over a month before the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on the Nintendo Switch. While the game sold over ten million units within a week of release, those figures will not be considered until the FY 2024 concludes next spring. Within the last fiscal year, games such as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and Metroid Prime Remastered were among the games released for the Switch console, which concluded its sixth year on the market. With the FY 2023 ended, the annual earnings for Nintendo's top brass may surprise some people.

According to the annual report, the top earning directors at Nintendo for FY 2023 were President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa, longtime director Shigeru Miyamoto, and directors Shinya Takahashi, Satoru Shiba, and Ko Shiota. Furukawa topped the list at 362 million yen, with Miyamoto earning 292 million yen. When converted to US dollars, Furukawa earned $2.51m, and Miyamoto earned $2.02m. Shiota was the only one on that list to earn six figures after conversion, at $910K. While this seems like a good chunk of change for Nintendo's top brass, the earnings were only a fraction of the $154m that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick earned in 2020. This means that Kotick's earnings in US dollars were over 100 times the amount that Furukawa reportedly made.

However, a majority of those earnings were listed as performance-based compensation. Of the 362 million yen Furukawa earned, 275 million of it was performance-based. By comparison, Miyamoto had 215 million yen listed as his performance-based earnings. With projects such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and other upcoming Nintendo Switch titles, Miyamoto still has his share of projects to manage.

Given the fact that the Switch is now partway into its seventh year on the market, rumors of Nintendo's upcoming Switch successor continue to ramp up across social media. It remains to be seen what that will do for the bottom lines of Furukawa, Miyamoto, and other Nintendo executives throughout FY 2024.