Nintendo employees make USD 1.6m each

The average Nintendo employee will make more than USD 1.6 million (GBP 800,000) in profit for their company this year.

That puts the 3000 permanent staff as some of the top profit generators around the world, according to the Financial Times - ahead, even, of US investment mega-bank Goldman Sachs.

If Nintendo hits its lofty JPY 410 billion (GBP 2 billion) net profit target, the company even stands to rival Goldman Sachs' pre-tax return on equity. Whatever that means.

Nintendo's ability to make that sort of money with relatively low full-time staff numbers was put down to outsourcing (and silly sales of the Wii and DS hardware, plus all the games sold for the systems). All manufacturing of Wii is handled by outside companies, as are titles such as Mario Party, which turned out a bit rubbish.

However, Mario will be keeping the lion's share of the profits to himself.

The average salary for Nintendo staff last year was USD 90,900 (GBP 45,450), while Goldman Sachs employees averaged a whopping USD 660,000 (GBP 330,000).