According to some research done by the Financial Times, employees at Nintendo have generated an average of $1.6 million each during this last year of business. For comparison, the high-powered stockbrokers at Goldman Sachs each brought back a paltry $1.24 million each, and unlike Nintendo employees, ended up actually keeping almost half of it.
Of course, this is a somewhat skewed measure due to the fact that Nintendo outsources manufacturing, much development and so on, maintaining a permanent staff of only 3000 people. Still, it’s an interesting stat and a powerful testament to the incredible success of the DS and Wii. I like the quote the article ends with:
“We are not experiencing success,” says one long-time Nintendo employee, with no sign of dissatisfaction, “just increased overtime”.
Very Japanese, from what I know of them.