The country for better or worse seems to be frozen in time - salaries have not caught up with the heady levels of SV (or even Europe) but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
This is not a judgment either way - but it does make Japanese exports a significantly more lucrative business - if only they could figure out how to sell more of their stuff abroad!
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
No, there really isn't. You're looking at one company that "apologized" as a marketing play but outside of that prices have been increasing with no fanfare for years now. The annual inflation rate has been 2-3% for the past 4 years. It's a lot less interesting to write a news article about that though.
I watch one of those “apartments for rent in Japan” channels and I’m consistently shocked how inexpensive apartments are in lower tier cities / not Tokyo. Like a studio in an inconvenient part of Fukuoka for $200-250 a month.
I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
That’s $22 per person. Would like to see what they ordered. Not saying I don’t believe it but that’s pretty high. My family of 4 can eat chilfila for that and chikfila is kind of pricey for fast food where Popeyes is pretty much trash.
Prices in California seem out of control to me. Recent examples, BLT + Coffee = $36, Plate of broccoli, plate of peas, small pizza, tap water = $95. Plate of 2 tacos, burger, 2 drinks = $120. 2 sandwiches = $60
As for Japan. ATM food is often cheaper. If you want cheap though, there are plenty of much cheaper places in the world. For rent, there are cheap options I wish existed in the states. As many point out tho, size is small. I'm happy to pay less for a smaller place but the price per square meter is comparable, maybe not to SF but at least to LA.
Note that like any city, there is a vast range from downtown to less popular parts of the city. "Tokyo" even includes mountains and farmlands on it's far west side
That's 10 cents for a single 35-calorie corn puff, to be clear, and it was a 25% price increase. 10 cents for one corn puff is not actually a good price.
In Japan, inflation adjusted wages are down 2% over the last 20 years. In the same time frame in the US, they're up 20% and even for the bottom quartile, earnings are up 15%.
I can't say I've ever been to Popeye's, but $68 for 3 people seems unlikely based on their online prices: I picked a random one in Orlando, Florida and the "family meal" (which appears to be a very large amount of chicken) is $20.
The closest thing would be the "16Pc Classic Signature Chicken Family Meal," which is $55.69 at that location and is described as feeding between 6 and 8 people. So you'd need to tip a bit to get to $68 from there.
Japan gets an economic pass because they have such a strict monoculture.
In the same way you can "break" the laws of thermodynamics by getting every atom to move in the same direction at the same time, you can "break" the laws of economics by getting every person to make the same illogical choice at the same time.
1. Issue bonds at near zero or even negative yield.
2. Buy US bonds.
The country is still one of the largest foreign US debt holders at $1.191T, and interest from this debt pays for a significant fraction of the interest on their own debt.
People forget that prices don't rise automatically. Businesses decide to raise prices. There isn't some magical force called inflation cuasing prices to go up. It's human decision-making all the way down.
I still can't afford a house. So I built one. It was cheap as hell even post covid, I think it took about $60k. I did not submit building plans, I did not get it code inspected, and I did not have any trades licenses. There is an actually "professional" built house next to me, following the gazillion licensing laws and planning nonsense, it is much older, run down, and barely larger but cost 5x the price.
The reason why you can't have a house isn't that you don't make enough to build one, it's that the people you elected tricked you into thinking "muh codes, zones, and environmental review" brought you safety rather than serfdom.
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>It’s true that you don’t need much expertise to build the house but electric and plumbing does need some, no? You don’t need to sell the property perhaps but how did you get labor? Surely you didn’t just do it all yourself.
No I literally did all of it including the electrical extension to the pole.
>Not sure where you live, but in my area -even if it's a great house- it would not end well.
I exploited a rarely used "loophole" since there was no "commercial" business on the house and it was fully DIY, and got it legalized through the county. Since there was no commerce it didn't interact with and trigger most of the regulations that were only legitimized on the basis they were regulating commercial activity. I have this explicitly stated on my permits that established the legal occupation of the house.
>So what you are saying is that you build a cheap house by breaking the laws and local regulations? Next logical step would be to just barge in the neighborhood house and live there for free.
I did not break the law. I exploited a loophole. My county issued me a closed permit explicitly acknowledging I did not break the law and that my house was legalized. To trigger building inspections in my county it can only be forced if there is compensation or commercial intent for building or use of the house, but you have to use a special process to record this with the county affirming you're the owner and the builder and it's a non-commercial non-rented domicile.
This does not apply to Nintendo of America, which famously does underpay in the Redmond, WA area and well.. I hear has trouble truly attracting talent in the first place.
The CEO then went on to explain, “We raised base salaries in Japan by 10 percent in April 2023,” adding, “Since then, we have continued to review our compensation system to ensure that remuneration aligns with employees’ demonstrated capabilities, and in April 2026 we implemented further salary increases, including for starting pay.”
If their last raise was 3-4 years ago, this is a simple inflation adjustment, amazing they get good vibe front page Hacker News credit for this.
All the other major game studios are dying and Nintendo is taking care of their employees. Just goes to show that focusing on making great games, being protective of golden goose IP, and making unique hardware rather than just trying to push prettier pixels is a winning strategy.
This is putting Nintendo on a pedestal. Major Japanese studios in general are consistently publishing great games and increasing hiring count / raising salaries. Switch 2 is also essentially just a spec bump from switch 1 which came out in 2017.
Nintendo gets a lot of flak for how they treat consumers and how litigious they are. However I get the impression they treat their employees very well in Japan. Like when the Wii U flopped, execs took a pay cut to avoid layoffs.
No company is perfect, but Nintendo seems like an example some C-suites should follow.
Its not even like they indiscriminately shut down fan projects either. Just the ones that try to make money. You still have sites like Pokemon Showdown and Advance Wars By Web that have been running for several decades without incident.
When I was a kid this Japanese guy from Nintendo used to live next to us. He gave me the Nintendo DS before its official release for my birthday. It was pretty cool.
I recently watched a video game journalist speaking about this(chicocartera from Eurogamer): apparently this raise happened in 2023. There was an official transcription from an investors meeting at that time where this was covered.
It seems there are some subtleties in the translation which could lead to think it happened recently.
Good for them. Nintendo and Sony in gaming have always marched by a different drummer. They have a successful business plan, and they execute. While their competition over the years have faded away bankruptcy.
The shareholders must be furious about this. Why not lay off 30% of the team and outsource game development and use ai for the art? That seems smarter.
This hasn't been the case for at least a decade now, if not more.
First it was extended out to maybe once every 2 years, then more, and lately at every company I've worked at (primarily large companies) where pay was mentioned the response is "we pay at or above market rates - discuss with your manager."
Not in all / not anymore. I'm in Canada a 300k IT/consulting company and rated top performer several years in a row. No raises last couple of years, before that it was 0.49 and 1% respectively. This year there was zero salary increase for anybody in our branch.
Individual employees. But the base rate (or band) stays the same, which is not what I'm reading here. So you might travel inside the band from low-paid to high-paid, while it stays the same.
Great thing about Nintendo is unlike its competitors, they don't go around chasing new tech and business models. All their focus is concentrated on the playing experience - interfacing, fun value, guilt-free hooks etc. In many ways they are more a classic toymaker than a tech firm. This is the reason why they have such a strong following, their product at least is not run by MBAs chasing every chance at a point increase in margins.
I wish there were more such successful "craftsman shops" out there than soulless "service providers" that today's video game companies are.
I replayed Luigi's Mansion during a long flight the other day, and my wife looked over my shoulder and went "That game looks cool. Is it new?"
This is exactly why Nintendo games tend to have strong legacies. Everyone back then could see realistic graphics just on the horizon, but they weren't there yet. Nintendo knew that the play experience is the important thing, and made art and designs that work within the limitations. Luigi's Mansion, Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, and Pikmin all still look and feel so good.
Before people praise them (a bit late for that I guess given the current comments), Nintendo seems to pay quite poorly their employees in the first place, as you can see from the salaries on https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/companies/nintendo/salaries/sof... for a company that has a stash of cash and is as successful as they are.
100k for entry level roles at one of the most recognizable brands of the world doesn’t seem too bad to me. Then again, I’ve never been to the Seattle/Washington area.
I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents (3 yen - source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/japanese-snack-company-apolog...)
The country for better or worse seems to be frozen in time - salaries have not caught up with the heady levels of SV (or even Europe) but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
This is not a judgment either way - but it does make Japanese exports a significantly more lucrative business - if only they could figure out how to sell more of their stuff abroad!
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
No, there really isn't. You're looking at one company that "apologized" as a marketing play but outside of that prices have been increasing with no fanfare for years now. The annual inflation rate has been 2-3% for the past 4 years. It's a lot less interesting to write a news article about that though.
https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/cpi/158c.html
I watch one of those “apartments for rent in Japan” channels and I’m consistently shocked how inexpensive apartments are in lower tier cities / not Tokyo. Like a studio in an inconvenient part of Fukuoka for $200-250 a month.
I guess the salaries are lower, but it’s hard to imagine such cheap rent in the equivalent American city.
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
That’s $22 per person. Would like to see what they ordered. Not saying I don’t believe it but that’s pretty high. My family of 4 can eat chilfila for that and chikfila is kind of pricey for fast food where Popeyes is pretty much trash.
Prices in California seem out of control to me. Recent examples, BLT + Coffee = $36, Plate of broccoli, plate of peas, small pizza, tap water = $95. Plate of 2 tacos, burger, 2 drinks = $120. 2 sandwiches = $60
As for Japan. ATM food is often cheaper. If you want cheap though, there are plenty of much cheaper places in the world. For rent, there are cheap options I wish existed in the states. As many point out tho, size is small. I'm happy to pay less for a smaller place but the price per square meter is comparable, maybe not to SF but at least to LA.
Note that like any city, there is a vast range from downtown to less popular parts of the city. "Tokyo" even includes mountains and farmlands on it's far west side
Comparing prices between Japan and Europe or US is strongly skewed by the weak yen.
The fact that the JPY has lost a lot of value compared to the US dollar has nothing to do with how prices or salaries in Japan evolve.
That's 10 cents for a single 35-calorie corn puff, to be clear, and it was a 25% price increase. 10 cents for one corn puff is not actually a good price.
In Japan, inflation adjusted wages are down 2% over the last 20 years. In the same time frame in the US, they're up 20% and even for the bottom quartile, earnings are up 15%.
As a kid, I always wondered why prices HAVE to keep going up. Seemed like a vicious cycle.
> but neither have rents or prices for common goods.
All the price increases over the last few years disagree.
I can't say I've ever been to Popeye's, but $68 for 3 people seems unlikely based on their online prices: I picked a random one in Orlando, Florida and the "family meal" (which appears to be a very large amount of chicken) is $20.
The closest thing would be the "16Pc Classic Signature Chicken Family Meal," which is $55.69 at that location and is described as feeding between 6 and 8 people. So you'd need to tip a bit to get to $68 from there.
Japan gets an economic pass because they have such a strict monoculture.
In the same way you can "break" the laws of thermodynamics by getting every atom to move in the same direction at the same time, you can "break" the laws of economics by getting every person to make the same illogical choice at the same time.
For the longest time their strategy was to:
1. Issue bonds at near zero or even negative yield.
2. Buy US bonds.
The country is still one of the largest foreign US debt holders at $1.191T, and interest from this debt pays for a significant fraction of the interest on their own debt.
Note that the snack price was increased "from 12 yen ($0.08) to 15 yen ($0.10)". That's a 25% increase.
Japan had decades of deflation after 1990. There’s a generation of people who got used to prices staying flat or going down.
> In Japan, there's a big issue when a snack raises its price 2 cents
That can't be true. So inflation just doesn't exist in Japan?
> I recently heard that a trip to Popeye's for a family of 3 recently cost $68 in Florida.
Does it?
People forget that prices don't rise automatically. Businesses decide to raise prices. There isn't some magical force called inflation cuasing prices to go up. It's human decision-making all the way down.
Popeye's for 3 costs ~$10 in India unless you're trying to make a full-course meal out of it.
Why should salaries catch up to heady levels of SV? There are very few places in US that can match SV in salary.
That's very cool. They don't say whether or not it's retroactive, though (I'll bet not).
I am astounded at some of the starting salaries, these days. Kids, right out of school, make more than I ever did, at the peak of my career.
And can't afford a house.
My father never made more than about $40K, but had a house in Potomac, two cars, and a stay-at-home wife.
Money ain't what it used to be.
I still can't afford a house. So I built one. It was cheap as hell even post covid, I think it took about $60k. I did not submit building plans, I did not get it code inspected, and I did not have any trades licenses. There is an actually "professional" built house next to me, following the gazillion licensing laws and planning nonsense, it is much older, run down, and barely larger but cost 5x the price.
The reason why you can't have a house isn't that you don't make enough to build one, it's that the people you elected tricked you into thinking "muh codes, zones, and environmental review" brought you safety rather than serfdom.
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>It’s true that you don’t need much expertise to build the house but electric and plumbing does need some, no? You don’t need to sell the property perhaps but how did you get labor? Surely you didn’t just do it all yourself.
No I literally did all of it including the electrical extension to the pole.
>Not sure where you live, but in my area -even if it's a great house- it would not end well.
I exploited a rarely used "loophole" since there was no "commercial" business on the house and it was fully DIY, and got it legalized through the county. Since there was no commerce it didn't interact with and trigger most of the regulations that were only legitimized on the basis they were regulating commercial activity. I have this explicitly stated on my permits that established the legal occupation of the house.
>So what you are saying is that you build a cheap house by breaking the laws and local regulations? Next logical step would be to just barge in the neighborhood house and live there for free.
I did not break the law. I exploited a loophole. My county issued me a closed permit explicitly acknowledging I did not break the law and that my house was legalized. To trigger building inspections in my county it can only be forced if there is compensation or commercial intent for building or use of the house, but you have to use a special process to record this with the county affirming you're the owner and the builder and it's a non-commercial non-rented domicile.
This does not apply to Nintendo of America, which famously does underpay in the Redmond, WA area and well.. I hear has trouble truly attracting talent in the first place.
How much does Nintendo of America really do? It's basically localization and marketing, right? And maybe outreach to third party developers?
I would imagine they're able to underpay due to the allure of working for Nintendo combined with a lack of actual positions.
Game devs in general underpay unless you're high up.
US tech wages are insanely inflated compared to, well, everywhere.
The CEO then went on to explain, “We raised base salaries in Japan by 10 percent in April 2023,” adding, “Since then, we have continued to review our compensation system to ensure that remuneration aligns with employees’ demonstrated capabilities, and in April 2026 we implemented further salary increases, including for starting pay.”
If their last raise was 3-4 years ago, this is a simple inflation adjustment, amazing they get good vibe front page Hacker News credit for this.
A lot of companies seem to not do consistent raises for inflation
All the other major game studios are dying and Nintendo is taking care of their employees. Just goes to show that focusing on making great games, being protective of golden goose IP, and making unique hardware rather than just trying to push prettier pixels is a winning strategy.
This is putting Nintendo on a pedestal. Major Japanese studios in general are consistently publishing great games and increasing hiring count / raising salaries. Switch 2 is also essentially just a spec bump from switch 1 which came out in 2017.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/atlus-to-increase-sal...
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/sega-is-raising-jap...
https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/03/06/capcom-salary-raise...
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/sonys-game-division-anno...
this is a puff piece. the raise was in April 2023
The other studios’ investors are winning just fine. That’s all that matters to them.
Nintendo gets a lot of flak for how they treat consumers and how litigious they are. However I get the impression they treat their employees very well in Japan. Like when the Wii U flopped, execs took a pay cut to avoid layoffs.
No company is perfect, but Nintendo seems like an example some C-suites should follow.
Its not even like they indiscriminately shut down fan projects either. Just the ones that try to make money. You still have sites like Pokemon Showdown and Advance Wars By Web that have been running for several decades without incident.
When I was a kid this Japanese guy from Nintendo used to live next to us. He gave me the Nintendo DS before its official release for my birthday. It was pretty cool.
For someone in Japan this is shockingly high! Money doesn’t go far here at all
Err does go far, right? Japan is pretty cheap in my experience.
Always a great thing to hear. Well paid employees, good results, and I'm definitely loving their Switch 2 releases already.
Off topic: what are you enjoying lately? Most of the games I have bought work on switch 1 but the screen and controls on the switch 2 are better.
I regret buying caravan sandwitch because it's so hard to see with my aging eyes but it is nice to play it anywhere.
Always curious to hear what others enjoy about it to help me have less regret in my $600 investment in Mario kart
I recently watched a video game journalist speaking about this(chicocartera from Eurogamer): apparently this raise happened in 2023. There was an official transcription from an investors meeting at that time where this was covered. It seems there are some subtleties in the translation which could lead to think it happened recently.
2023 was 3 years ago, so if raises were 3% under inflation they are due for another 10% increase again.
I would expect raises were more like 1-2% under inflation and so they won't be due for a couple more years.
Japanese Yen is now 162 to USD, the lowest exchange rate since 1986.
And they are seeing sustained inflation for the first time since 2000. Not a great time to be paid in yen.
Good for them. Nintendo and Sony in gaming have always marched by a different drummer. They have a successful business plan, and they execute. While their competition over the years have faded away bankruptcy.
10% from what to what? Japanese companies are not famous for pay.
Yeah without context this could be good or bad.
Good for them. My colleague used to work for them, said it was the best
In Japan, giving your employees a raise is very rare and a sign of great respect.
The shareholders must be furious about this. Why not lay off 30% of the team and outsource game development and use ai for the art? That seems smarter.
I thought it is common in big companies to raise salaries by x% every year?
I'm not gonna lie, I chuckled a bit reading this.
This hasn't been the case for at least a decade now, if not more.
First it was extended out to maybe once every 2 years, then more, and lately at every company I've worked at (primarily large companies) where pay was mentioned the response is "we pay at or above market rates - discuss with your manager."
Not in all / not anymore. I'm in Canada a 300k IT/consulting company and rated top performer several years in a row. No raises last couple of years, before that it was 0.49 and 1% respectively. This year there was zero salary increase for anybody in our branch.
When it was, it was typically some amount less than inflation. 1-2%
Individual employees. But the base rate (or band) stays the same, which is not what I'm reading here. So you might travel inside the band from low-paid to high-paid, while it stays the same.
Japan had zero or negative interest rates for decades, a period which ended a couple of years ago.
not anymore
And the weakening of the yen to the dollar reduced the salary by -12% over the last year.
Whats the highest paying gane studio? Rockstar?
Congratulations Nintendo employees! I've always had great conversations and interactions with your engineers so I think this is well deserved.
It mostly seems that Nintendo is trying very hard to prevent any concern over their stock price dropping like a rock
https://www.shacknews.com/article/149817/nintendo-ntdoy-pres...
Oh no, their poor stock! They should lay everyone off, cut pay, and join the dystopia like everyone else!
Stockholders seem concerned that Nintendo isn't throwing away enough of their seed corn, like all the other major game publishers are.
Great thing about Nintendo is unlike its competitors, they don't go around chasing new tech and business models. All their focus is concentrated on the playing experience - interfacing, fun value, guilt-free hooks etc. In many ways they are more a classic toymaker than a tech firm. This is the reason why they have such a strong following, their product at least is not run by MBAs chasing every chance at a point increase in margins.
I wish there were more such successful "craftsman shops" out there than soulless "service providers" that today's video game companies are.
I replayed Luigi's Mansion during a long flight the other day, and my wife looked over my shoulder and went "That game looks cool. Is it new?"
This is exactly why Nintendo games tend to have strong legacies. Everyone back then could see realistic graphics just on the horizon, but they weren't there yet. Nintendo knew that the play experience is the important thing, and made art and designs that work within the limitations. Luigi's Mansion, Wind Waker, Super Mario Sunshine, and Pikmin all still look and feel so good.
Indies are where it's at. Increasingly, the modern games I play are either by nintendo or indie devs with the exception of the occasional atlus game
Don't forget their patent trolling, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43059215 and general IP related bullying.
Before people praise them (a bit late for that I guess given the current comments), Nintendo seems to pay quite poorly their employees in the first place, as you can see from the salaries on https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/companies/nintendo/salaries/sof... for a company that has a stash of cash and is as successful as they are.
100k for entry level roles at one of the most recognizable brands of the world doesn’t seem too bad to me. Then again, I’ve never been to the Seattle/Washington area.
160-250k jobs? I think no action would satisfy you.