![Eiji Aonuma on Nintendo Layoffs: 10,977 Jobs Lost [2026]](https://www.mogazmasr.com/uploads/2026/11/08/eiji-aonuma-nintendo-staff-retention-3fbe1f89_800w.webp)
Eiji Aonuma said Nintendo gets a real advantage from keeping very long-term-tenured staff members around, arguing that teams move more smoothly when people have shared the same experience over time. He said that when a project reaches the next step, it is easier to talk through how to proceed if the same people have been working together for years.
His remarks were flagged on Nov. 5 at a moment when game-industry layoffs in 2026 had already passed the total for all of 2025, according to a tracker reported on by TweakTown. That is why the comments drew attention: they landed in a year when staffing cuts have stayed in the headlines, and any hint of a different approach from Nintendo gets picked apart quickly.
Aonuma also explained why long service matters inside Nintendo. New staff, he said, need onboarding and need to be shown how and why things are done, and that process takes more time. Secondary sources say he has spent 38 years at Nintendo, which gives weight to his view that shared history can make development easier to manage.
But the interview material does not confirm the broader claim that Nintendo has a formal zero-layoff policy. Some coverage turned his comments into that conclusion, yet what he actually described was the practical value of long-tenured staff, not a company rule written in stone. The difference matters, because valuing continuity is not the same thing as pledging never to cut jobs.
In the GameSpot interview, Aonuma was talking about how teams get from one stage of development to the next, and his point was straightforward: experience shortens the distance between an idea and the next decision. What remains unanswered is whether Nintendo’s staffing approach is an informal preference for continuity or something closer to an explicit policy, and the quoted interview does not settle that.
