Legendary creator of Super Smash Bros. and Kirby Masahiro Sakurai has secured a Switch 2 pre-orders have been chaos, with a litany of website errors on top of the high demand. Despite Sakurai's long history of working with Nintendo, he too had to put his Switch 2 hopes in the hands of a lottery, and luckily managed to secure a spot.

Masahiro Sakurai tweeted (via GamesRadar) about being selected for the My Nintendo Store lottery in Japan, which notified its selected winners on April 24 that their Nintendo Switch 2 pre-order had been secured. Sakurai is currently developing Kirby Air Riders for the console, and has a long history with Nintendo, being the creator of the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. franchises. Sakurai clearly has access to a Nintendo Switch 2 dev kit for his work on Air Riders, but the console itself is in apparently such high demand that he wasn't gifted one from Nintendo.

Sakurai & Other Prominent Developers Are Also Scrambling For A Switch 2

Everyone In The Industry Is Excited Too

As noted by GamesRadar, plenty of prominent figures around the gaming industry, not just Sakurai, are trying to get their hands on a Switch 2. Everyone from LocalThunk, creator of indie darling and GOTY contender Balatro, to The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley is trying to secure a Switch 2 pre-order. Sakurai had more luck than both of them – LocalThunk and Keighley both wrote about how they were unable to get a pre-order confirmed.

Sakurai's success seems to have come from the My Nintendo Store lottery, which had previously been thrown into question by aren't guaranteed to arrive by launch day.

Nintendo Switch 2 Is Set To Have The Biggest Console Launch Ever, Despite Pre-Order Chaos

The Switch's Form Factor Is A Massive Hit

While the technical realities of actually pre-ordering a Switch 2 have caused some issues, Nintendo's latest console is already an incredible success. The fervor over the Switch 2 is resulting in retailers selling out of stock almost immediately. Bloomberg predicts that the Switch 2 has a chance to be the biggest hardware launch of all time, selling somewhere between six and eight million units. This is impressive but not necessarily a revelation; the original Switch is incredibly popular – the second best-selling home console of all time behind the PlayStation 2 – and the Switch 2 is a straight upgrade, with backward compatibility to boot.

The Switch's versatility as a home console that can also be used on the go has proven to be a runaway success for Nintendo, leading to a resurgence of handheld gaming devices, including the Steam Deck (which can similarly be hooked up to a monitor) and even an unrevealed Xbox handheld. The Switch 2 has faced some controversy over its price, which is $150 more than the original Switch, and that of its games, but that hasn't slowed down the excitement. Even industry icons like Masahiro Sakurai are lining up for their chance to get a Nintendo Switch 2 on release.

Sources: Masahiro Sakurai/Twitter (via GamesRadar), LocalThunk/Bluesky, Bloomberg