Nintendo boss Iwata halves pay, Miyamoto's wage cut too

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has announced he will take a 50 per cent pay cut in response to the company's continued financial problems.

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and another director, Genyo Takeda, will both take a 30 per cent wage reduction. The seven other members of the company's board will all take a 20 per cent pay cut, AFP reports.

The changes will take effect in February and last until June, at which time the adjustments will be reviewed based on the company's ongoing progress.

Today's announcement comes just over a week after Nintendo significantly reduced its predictions for company's performance this financial year, based primarily on poor sales of its struggling Wii U console. Overall, Nintendo now expects to make another loss.

Iwata previously cut his pay for a time after the company's wobbly launch of the 3DS - although that machine's fortunes were restored by a quick-fire price cut and the double-punch release of Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7.

Nintendo last night published its financial results for the four months ending 31st December. Tonight, Iwata will face investors for its regular quarterly earnings presentation.

The company now reports that it has shipped 5.86 million Wii U consoles and 29.37m units of disc-based Wii U software (including sales of digital copies and packed-in games).

Wii U titles Super Mario 3D World, Wii Party U and Zelda: The Wind Waker HD have all now passed the 1m sales mark.

For 3DS, the company has now shipped 42.74m hardware units. Software stands at 152.29m. Pokémon X and Y sold a whopping 11.6m copies - roughly equal with the series' last few DS instalments. Animal Crossing: New Leaf sold another 3.5m worldwide (for a total now north of 7m), while Zelda: A Link Between Worlds currently sits on 2.18m since late November.