It's almost like Nintendo knows what its doing, even when they hit a downturn. Meanwhile even Sony's shaving off employees at its top tier studios, at least two of the major publishers in Ubisoft and WB are doing all sort of split shenanigans while on fire, as had been done by Embracer....

Nintendo also grows much slower than many of the other big publishers have during the last couple of years. Just look at MS alone. Even if they hadn't fired any dev during their Activision-Blizzard/Bethesda/whatever purchases, how many redundant positions would this leave? Nintendo seems much more efficient when hiring and expanding.

The quality of Nintendo's software and the employee culture are probably their biggest strengths despite the high prices they put on the consumer and their intense intellectual protections.

Crazy hardware and software sales at very high prices (the software part, at least) yield very high margins, paired with considerably lower average budgets for best-sellers. In addition, they're known for taking care of their own, it's claimed to be a terrific workplace.

As someone else mentioned; this is as much of a reflection on the shithousery that is Western development and corporate culture as anything. 

Nintendo has proven that they really are better than Microsoft when it comes to the game industry.

You should request a name change to CaptainObvious.

While much of the Western industry is indeed a shitshow these days, Nintendo of America managed a staff retention rate of 95%, not that far off the Japanese branch.

It's one thing to point out the problems with business culture in the west but promoting business culture in Japan as a wonderful alternative is ridiculous. Employees might have more stability but they pay a very steep price for it. Unpaid overtime, stagnant wages, power harassment, punishment for speaking out, and insane hours are just some aspects of it.

A big part of that stability in Japan is that individual employees are expected to do MORE WORK for less money, meaning that they don't hire new employees, they just pile more tasks on the ones they already have until they're working 16 hours a day just to finish. It's also somewhat common to threaten employees who try to quit with legal action or just the "you'll never work in this industry again" warning.

Criticize the corporate environment in the west, sure, but doing it by romanticizing the corporate environment in Japan is crazy.

I didn't see anyone romanticising Japan's corporate culture per se, and from what I've read conditions are Nintendo are considered quite good.

People more seemed to be criticising the way a lot of Western companies seem to lay off their employees in droves every time a quarter doesn't break records. (Or even when they do make record profits)

There's something to be said for cultivating talent and hanging onto them, and it shows in Nintendo's continued success.

I don't know about individual companies--though Japan has a lot of "black" companies--but I saw a couple of people praising Japanese business culture, including one talking about some kind of "loyalty and honor" nonsense.

Nintendo is actually a good example of both--assuming everything is great there now--because under Yamauchi they were as cutthroat as Microsoft.

No arguments about the "share price is all that matters" philosophy in the west, which pretty much ruined everything.