Iwata taking 50% pay cut over 3DS performance

Nintendo is dropping the price of the 3DS next month. In addition, the company has announced plans to institute a price cut on president Satoru Iwata. At a conference in Tokyo, Iwata told investors that he was taking responsibility for the 3DS's slow sales, along with a 50 percent reduction in pay as a result.

Iwata's last annual compensation was ¥137 million, or $1.8 million (including salary and performance-based "variable compensation"). He didn't announce specifics of the cut, but we can expect both the base salary and the bonus to be lower, since lower performance is the whole reason for this exercise. Other "representative directors," including Senior Managing Directors Shigeru Miyamoto and Shinji Hatano, will take 30 percent pay cuts, and other execs will lose 20 percent off their salaries.

Analyst David Gibson tweeted from the conference that Nintendo cited a missed opportunity to cut the GameCube's price as motivation to jump on the 3DS price cut.