Nintendo's touted 10% pay raise turns out to be three years old

At a shareholder meeting, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa cited a 10% increase to employee base salaries as evidence that the company keeps compensation at an appropriate level to retain talent. The framing initially read as a fresh raise for the Kyoto-based games maker.

Kotaku later clarified that the 10% bump actually happened more than three years ago, and Furukawa was referencing that earlier move rather than announcing anything new. The remark was part of broader reassurances to investors about maintaining competitive pay.

The episode is a reminder to read executive investor-relations statements—especially machine-translated ones—carefully, since a retrospective talent-retention talking point can easily be mistaken for a current policy change.