
 Nintendo makes more profit per employee than Goldman (or Google) - nickb
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9d9624a4-8341-11dd-907e-000077b07658.html
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gcv
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics." :)

When someone says "the average employee" at an investment bank made 600K last
year, or brought in 1.25M in profits, keep in mind the old joke about how,
when Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average guy in that bar becomes a
multimillionaire.

Every trader, salesperson, and banker has dozens of people working to support
his or her work with paying clients. The support staff, which includes
operations and IT, generates absolutely no revenue at all. (With possible
exceptions for the small handful of people who write automated trading and
risk systems.) Correspondingly, the support staff is not paid anywhere nearly
as well as people who work in "producing" divisions. Notice that no one talks
about the median employee, which would be a much more interesting metric.

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pmjordan
Nintendo are nuts. The guys at Nintendo in charge of a project I worked on
never seemed to stop working, despite their night time falling into our time
zone's work hours. It's pretty sad to hear that for their extended 7-day work
week they're getting $90k on average.

~~~
chaostheory
it's not really crazy in East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea). it's more or
less the norm. sacrifice everything for big corporation X and yet not expect a
sizable reward within a relatively short time frame (well at least by Western
standards)

I take it no one has heard of Samsung's dormitories? For the 1st 2 years of
employment there as an engineer, you have to live in the company dorm with
your team (sharing a room with a bunk bed with 1 team member). o yeah they
also get to regulate when you can leave company grounds (like for going out on
a date). it's a very dif world there...

~~~
run4yourlives
At least when I was in the army I got to shoot real guns.

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adrianwaj
Key takeaway: "Nintendo is able to make so much money with so few people
because it relies on outsourcing."

I met a fellow who once employed over 30 people for his building construction
company. Then he became one person, with the rest outsourced. Maybe he is
doing better than Nintendo if one measures success as the article does.

~~~
dskhatri
Yes, and here's another great example of outsourcing: Vizio, the flat panel TV
manufacturer had revenues of $1.9b with only 85 employees. That's
$22.4m/employee in revenues. I don't know what their profit margin is though.
([http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/company-
profile.html?id=2008...](http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/company-
profile.html?id=200800320))

~~~
rokhayakebe
Isn't Vizio a Sony Wing?

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casta
It prints money! :D <http://gonintendo.com/wp-content/photos/prints_money.gif>

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akd
Why is this surprising? Nintendo actually makes something that people want.

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mattmaroon
Maybe the guys from Zoho can explain to us why that means they're never going
to really care about portable gaming or something.

~~~
sridharvembu
Actually, it would explain very well why Nintendo would never get into, say,
DVD players, HDTVs and such.

And Nintendo's per-capita profitability also explains why Microsoft is so
desperate to break into video games, except that they just haven't been able
to replicate the magic so far.

~~~
sachinag
Actually, they did get into DVD players, with the Japan-only Q:
<http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewArt.cfm?artid=3886> and the Wii is
supposedly going to add DVD capabilities (for a couple years now, though):
[http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2006/10/31/japan-getting-
wi...](http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2006/10/31/japan-getting-wii-with-dvd-
playback/)

~~~
kirse
You can already add DVD capabilities through a tiny hack that works on modded
and unmodded Wiis: [http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/13/the-wii-finally-gets-
dvd-...](http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/13/the-wii-finally-gets-dvd-playback-
no-thanks-to-nintendo/)

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brianobush
The reason maybe is that Nintendo focuses on ONE market and do a reasonable
job in delivering what people want: good games. Goldman has different units in
different markets all trying to make money: investment banking, securities,
research groups, etc.

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13ren
Maybe now, but just before the DS (and Wii), they weren't looking very healthy
financially.

~~~
scott_s
I don't think this is true. From what I know, even during the GameCube years,
they were turning healthy profits.

~~~
chaostheory
you're right. even when Nintendo was a dismal 3rd in the last console war with
Gamecube, they were still making very healthy profits with the console. still
dominating the handheld market helps too.

Before Wii, I could wrong, but I think they had about 3 billion in cash
reserves.

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b1te
Thats impressive - given that Goldman's VAR each day must be massive in
comparison...

GS made 3-4 times less this quarter than the same period last year though.

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nazgulnarsil
nintendo stock is hard to buy.

~~~
chaostheory
that's what I thought too but you can buy it easily in the US market if you
look for OTC:NTDOY

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immad
Its not doing very well this year. Is that just because of the market
downturn?

~~~
chaostheory
I'm not an expert but they're still printing money with DSs and Wiis and
they've increased their revenue projections this year... so I would guess yes

