Without specific regards to Nintendo, you could visit a lot of offices here which have the "N programmers at N computers on one table" office layout, and they're frequently a wee bit underpowered. (In 2010 I was rocking XP and fighting to upgrade from 512MB to 1GB of RAM for Java development.)

This is, at least in part, because of the relative social statuses of people who program things and people who do important work for the company.

One would think that game developers would be exquisitely sensitive to the needs of programmers because, hey, that is their business, but anecdotally they're treated pretty much like they are in the US: chew 'em up, spit 'em out, there will be more stupid boys to take their place next year. (I got a solicitation to work for a game company here by a recruiter who had heard of me from my ex-employers. I kid you not, the pay was $2k a month.)

Interesting. Is the job market different from the US, where there is a core group of actual programmers that want real money, and then a group of people that could theoretically pretend to be programmers, and will work for free?

(My first thought was, "well, the schools are better", but I went to high school for a year in Tokyo, and I did not touch a computer once. I has a scheme interpreter on a PalmOS device that I played with, and that was it.)