Business

Nintendo’s 98% staff retention rate means the average employee has been there 15 years

December 5, 2025

Good morning. When experienced employees leave — whether they’re laid off, or jump ship for a better opportunity — they take years, if not decades, of experience with them. Over time, the company loses that institutional knowledge.

Nintendothe Japanese video game giant, is a case in point. Its Japanese employees spend an average of 15 years at the company, which boasts an annual retention rate of 98%. Not only is this better than the layoff-prone video game industry, it’s better than most parts of Japan. The average Japanese worker spends 11 years at his company; In the United States, that number is closer to four.

“The people who first made Nintendo hits still work for the company,” said Keiza MacDonald, author of the book super nintendo, An upcoming book told me about the developer recently. “For the past 50 years, these people have been passing on knowledge and training a new generation of Nintendo creators.”

Both Nintendo’s business and creative leaders have had long tenures at the company. Current President Shuntaro Furakawa joined the company in 1994 as an accountant. Shigeru Miyamoto, the mastermind behind franchises like “Super Mario” and “The Legend of Zelda,” joined as a staff artist in 1977.

There is a risk that companies that rely too heavily on institutional knowledge will get stuck in their ways. However, according to McDonald, Nintendo has combined institutional knowledge with new ideas to continually revamp its pipeline of entertainment games: “It’s not like the older guy decides what’s a good idea and what’s not. Everyone’s putting ideas in.”

Nintendo has had its share of failures, failed experiments, and baffling business decisions – as every company does. However, the company maintains its share in the highly competitive video game industry against larger and deeper competitors such as Sony and Microsoft.

The few designers who left Nintendo still have good feelings about their time there. As Lee Schuneman, a former Nintendo game designer who is now chief product officer at Efekta Education Group, told the Brainstorm design audience this week: “I’ve worked with some of the most talented game designers in the world, including people like [Shigeru Miyamoto] At Nintendo, and [learn] A complete collection of lessons on how to make fun experiments.

This goodwill may have been a result of Nintendo avoiding the boom-and-bust vicissitudes of the industry and valuing the experience its workforce had accumulated.

“Nintendo, to this day, still makes games differently than anyone else,” MacDonald says. You can check out the rest of our sessions on the main stage from Brainstorm Design here-Nicholas Gordon

Contact the CEO daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

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