Random: Masahiro Sakurai Finds Success In Switch 2 Lottery

you'd think the man would already have access to one given he's making a game for the thing, but no. he's waitin' in line like the rest of the lot.

Yes, all above board, nothing to see here, haha. Jokes aside, well done to Sakurai, yet another one to add to that substantial collection. Hope he finds the time to play.

@N00BiSH He has access to one for development only I guess.

@N00BiSH yeah I understand not handing out a switch to every employee but not Sakurai? After everything he’s done?

Truly bizarre he'd have to enter the lottery to obtain one. Perhaps it was self-enforced, not wanting to jump the line, so to speak, based on his position.

@SplatRay001 Well, he isn't techically employed at the company, to be fair

"Although he likely has a dev kit somewhere"
Just to clarify, devkits can't be used to play commercial games.

@N00BiSH on the one hand I agree he should be given one.

On the other hand, I think he has implied that he has no benefits when it comes to actually getting a system at launch, Nintendo or not.

@speed_loafer Hopefully so. He’s my favorite game dev. Wouldn’t want to see him treated with such disrespect (considering he’s making an EXCLUSIVE game for the system)

Im sure he has access to all Nintendo hardware but like a company vehicle, he has to buy his own to keep it.

He’s going to sell it for sure ain’t no way Nintendo aren’t sending him one for free. Masahiro Scalperai

You deserved it, Sakurai! Shame you couldn’t get it for free, but at least you got a pre-order in amongst the chaos. June 5 can’t come soon enough!

With him making Kirby Air Riders, I'd imagine he already has one, but maybe this one will be just for personal use?

@larryisaman he paid for the the lottery, did he not?

@larryisaman hahahaha okay that literally made me laugh out loud

The man who gave us Smash Bros, he should be given one of the first off the production line!!

Maybe if you’re the owner of a business you can transfer company purchased products into your ownership without compensating, but even then there’s still rules you’re following in a legitimate setting

@NinChocolate Ahhh. That makes more (and a lot) of sense.

this is probably just part of a merketing deal he has with them. No biggie

As someone who’s worked with Nintendo reps in the past, not surprising. Working for Nintendo has its perks, but getting a day one launch system is not one of them! Awesome exclusive apparel though…. Oh yeah. They get some AWESOME jackets.

And I’m sure once demand has died down they’d get the option to purchase direct.

Heck even working for GameStop, getting day one systems was not a thing. You had to wait for everyone else to pre-order, then at the end of the day if there was stock leftover, you could clock out and pre-order as a customer. Seems to still be the case as I’d talked to a couple workers there yesterday and most of them had pre-ordered through Walmart or Best Buy. Local shop had 22 systems, 9 of which were regular models, rest were MKW models. I was one of the lucky handful, though truth be told it was odd seeing only like 10 people in line. Wii U launch the line wrapped around the store. Just less people pre-ordering in person now days I guess! 🤷

This is hilarious though I’d like to think in reality Nintendo will give Sakurai a switch 2 at launch for free.

If they don’t they really have become as greedy as we’ve feared.

@TheBigK Same

@datamonkey If you really think they've "started" being greedy then you really haven't been paying attention.

I mean, you can't play retail games on the dev kit AFAIK

I'm sure if he reached out to Nintendo they would have given him one but no, Sakurai's a true gamer!😎

I feel like Sakurai is the type of guy that still enjoys receiving a console on release day, and prefers to own a retail console in his personal collection.

I feel like people bragging about getting preorders is nothing more than a p*ssing contest

I am gonna sound like a cranky old lady but I never understand people caping for gainfully employed (and often wealthy) people to get something for free. He can afford it. That is literally what face paper is for. Let him be a consumer like everyone else. I suspect the devs and engineers that made the switch 2 and the games didn’t get one for free (and they shouldn’t). If you have the money, buy the product. Good on Sakurai-san for doing so.

Congratulations, Sakurai-San! Good luck with Air Riders!

@SplatRay001
Even thou I think I know what you are referring to, Sakurai hasn't been a Nintendo employee for a long time now

@N00BiSH hah true I was being generous!

@speed_loafer He seems like the kinda guy who'd do that

oh please he has access to a switch 2 console already.

Given the importance of the guy at Nintendo, you'd think he already has Switch 2 for his entire extended family. This is just a masquerade.

Andrew here. I quit Twitter a while ago now, so credit for spotting Sakurai’s tweet ultimately goes to my better half. Looks like his tweet about entering the lottery from earlier this month also flew under my radar. Here’s a quick translation for anyone interested:

予約抽選応募できました｡
仕事でも使うと思うので､多言語版を…｡
当たるといいなあ｡

I managed to enter the preorder lottery.
I figured I might use it for work, so I opted for the multi-language system.
Sure hope I win.

日本では、抽選の発表で各界の有名人も軒並み外れたと言っていて、桜井さんの当選は話題になっています☺️

"In Japan, the lottery results were announced, and many famous figures from various fields said they didn’t win. Sakurai’s win has become a hot topic. 😊

Hoping I get the lottery draw on May 8th.

Well done winning the lottery...

What kind of lottery is that, he should get the darn thing for free 😅

@datamonkey Dunno I'd unironically think it's best they don't play favourites for the actual system.

Though Sakurai almost certainly has Switch 2 Dev Kit(s) to develop Kirby's Air Ride. This one he's pre-ordered is probably for personal use.

not sure the tweet was translated correctly.. I think it starts

And? And? And? ...
And?

Man, that guy. Sakurai-san's a good one. He'll wait in line like the rest of us, even though he's developing a game for it.

@romanista

Hi, I’m a professional J-E translator and salaried video game localizer. I’m also a former teacher, and since you’re interested in language learning and translation, I’ll try to explain my translation choice. After all, it was a choice born of necessity and arrived at for reasons.

“と、と、と……
と?

当選でございます!!”

A simple, straightforward interpretation would render something along the lines of “You win” or “I won,” depending on how you infer what Sakurai implied, but that would fail to capture the character of the tweet, in my opinion.
Basically, there are only two elements to work with as a translator: 当選(tōsen), a noun meaning success in an election (so, “a win” in that specific context), and でございます(degozaimasu), the most formal form of the copula verb in common usage. Hopefully, you can begin to see the challenges of capturing even something so simple in natural English, as not so much as who “won” what is stated, cheeky formalities aside.
The “と、と、と(to, to, to)…” that begins the tweet is actually stammering the first syllable (technically, the first mora) of 当選 (tōsen). と(to) can mean “and” as in “A and B,” but it’s not a perfect linguistic analogy to the English word, and has different meanings including “with,” “if,” and “when,” among other usages. I don’t think anyone with a moderate degree of fluency in Japanese would have interpreted that as “And, and, and…” At this point in the tweet, it’s basically gibberish. I’m not a native speaker, but the inquisitive “と(to)?” that follows added just a hint of “ということは(to iu koto wa)?” in my mind, which is an expression along the lines of “Meaning what exactly?” In any case, it builds up anticipation and expresses surprise/disbelief but conveys little more than that until we finally arrive at “当選でございます(tōsen degozaimasu)!!” after the line break.
I wanted to capture the playful nature of the tweet in Japanese, and English grammar requires complete sentences with subjects, verbs, and objects in a rigid word order, so my best swing at “What would Sakurai have written if he were a native English speaker?” was:

“I-I-I…
I what…?

I won the lottery!!”

Hope that clears things up for you. Cheers!

(Edited slightly.)

@A_WINNER_IS_Mii Thanx, fun to see that this month I made a remark about japanese twice, and twice I got a great explanation... beats duolingo;)

Btw maybe it is because i'm Dutch, but the Dutch equivalent En? En? En? (with and=en) would make perfect sense to me, like being really excited to know the result of something...

@romanista

It’s worth keeping in mind that, on the family tree of human language, Japanese is a very distant relative of English and Dutch, and as such, is a very different tongue from any European language, let alone Germanic.
To make progress in your Japanese studies, at some point, you’ll have to stop thinking in your native language and start thinking in Japanese.
Then, if you want to become a translator, you can start asking yourself, “How might a native speaker, given myriad linguistic and cultural differences, express this same thought in my own language?”
Cheers!

@A_WINNER_IS_Mii Thanx for the tips... i'm just trying to learn Japanese for when i will make a trip there with my daughter in a few years.

I really learned to understand languages when I had Ancient Classical Greek in High School.,... Grammar really was a puzzle , which helped me when learning Italian and other languages like Bahasa Indonesia

@NinChocolate This describes the situation perfectly, well said! I was in a similar boat with one of my older companies, I had a company device and when I was leaving the company, I had to return it even though the device was already retired and out of compliance.