Nintendo defended a decision in a recent shareholders meeting to raise employee wages by 10% on top of their annual wage increase.

According to Nintendo, the decision was made to assist employees with growing costs due to rising global inflation.

This 10% increase will also apply to all in-coming employees and can be considered a rise in base pay for all Nintendo positions.

When asked about the raise, Shuntaro Furukawa the Representative Director and President of Nintendo had this to say:

I believe the most important factor in maintaining our high level of competitiveness is to value the employees that have created various popular products and built our brand. Currently, we are experiencing unprecedented levels of global inflation, and in Japan, we understand that people are facing increasing financial pressure in their daily lives. For this reason, to deal with long-term and continuing changes in the environment, Nintendo increased the base salary for all employees in Japan by 10%, separate from the annual wage increase. In addition, to strengthen our competitiveness in the job market and increase the overall capabilities of the company over the medium and long term, we also increased the starting salary for new graduate hires in Japan by approximately 10%.

These changes apply to Nintendo employees based in Japan, it’s uncertain if Nintendo of America will make similar allowances for their employees.