Masahiro Sakurai's PS3 crashes, costing him nearly two decades' worth of save data

Masahiro Sakurai, best known as the creator of Kirby and the director of the 3DS's Kid Icarus: Uprising, is facing disaster.

The sordid details were laid out in the column he wrote this week for Japan's Famitsu magazine. What happened? "The hard disk on my PlayStation 3 has completely died," he said. "It's a full crash. The end. Goodbye, Planet Earth."

[Kobe357]

He should have gotten PSPlus

[NeverEnding1989]

But why would I pay to save? Isn't that a service that everyone else offers for free?

[turgore]

You also get a lot of other goodies. The saves are just icing on the cake.

[Army_of_Darkness]

A side from PC, who else offers free cloud saves??
I'm just curious?

[ziggurcat]

normal game saving? obviously, yes.

cloud saving? no.

[Phoenix-Ho-Yoku]

lol dude if u think thats the only thing ps+ is doing...

you get free exclusives avatars
Animated themes
Beta's Early acces
Full games for free
the best games out there half the price

more and more....the saving thing is just a little bonus

[aquamala]

def free on Steam and Origin

[Eyeco]

Yeah I spent £10 for PS+ and on top of of cloud saves I got an ass load of free games Red Dead Redemption, Bulletstorm, Dead Space 2, Little Big Planet 2, Borderlands, Infamous 2, Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition(already played it but lost the disc) Double Dragon Neo, as well as exclusive trials, demo's, betas, free dynamic screen savers, discount on games, cloud saves, so what is that like £300-400 worth of content all for £10-30 if that's not a robbery I don't know what is, it's essentially the closest thing console gaming is gonna get to Steam.

[turnerdc]

@ Army_of_Darkness

Free on OnLive.

[Ben_Grimm]

@Never

I totally see what you did there.

[GarandShooter]

Do you ask the same question about playing online?

[oricon]

You do not get full games for free you get rentals of pre determined games.

[Tonester925]

Never put 100% trust in technology

[Elwenil]

I find it odd that a software programmer doesn't back everything up regularly out of habit. Every programmer I have known did it like it was their religion.

[kneon]

For important stuff I have a raid array plus at least 2 other back ups on non-raid storage.

I do a full back up of my PS3s every 2-3 weeks, back up stuff to PSN and for non-locked game saves I also save a copy to a flash drive.

If it's important to you then back it up or don't come crying when your drive inevitably fails.

[GraveLord]

How convenient. He is known for making Nintendo games. He just HAD to let people know. It's not like he has any hidden agenda here.....

EDIT: Like other people are saying, if you were smart you would have gotten Playstation Plus to back up all your saves to the cloud. It's weird how you can play so many Playstation games and not be subscribed to Playstation Plus....

[aquamala]

why do Sony fanboys need to be so defensive, don't be so surprised when hard drives fail.

[HammadTheBeast]

Why is Sony even mentioned then? He could've just said "Hard Drive Failure".

[beerkeg]

Did you even read it Gravelord? No you didn't, that would be too much hard work aye?

'Sakurai took the rest of his column to discuss the online-backup features of the PlayStation Plus service, as well as similar backup tools on the Xbox 360 and other systems. "Going through this, I wanted to take this column to nag at all of you a little," he closed. "If you don't want to come face-to-face with this depressing turn of events, then it's best if you back up your game save data as much as you can. Right now! Immediately!"'

So obviously after he talked about what happened to him I imagine he spoke about the virtues of the backup tools on PlayStation Plus.

But hey ho, lets turn it into a fanboi fest about hidden agendas.

[glennco]

judging by his agrees there are a bunch of readers who don't read anything but the heading

[violents]

The article was really about reminding people to back up their saves, he's a develper and he forgot. All he's trying to do is give you a word for the wiser. It's just too bad he had to screw up to realize it.

"remember to back up info you want to save"

[TheLyonKing]

Silly man, that happened to me once when I was coding and now I am extra careful.
I have two external Hardrives plus i regularly back everything up.

I know his pain but maybe nOt to a great as extent as him.

[hill71]

and

[modesign]

what a moron, always back up your data with multiple technologies.

[GameLord08]

One of the most renowned Nintendo video-game designers is a "moron" now, because he was succeptible to a hardware failure?

Well, it looks like we have two now, don't we?

[JAMurida]

I wouldn't call him a moron, but I do agree that is really is almost common practice that you should ALWAYS back up your data, despite what platform you play on.

[GameLord08]

Oh, I do agree it was a bit silly of him to not back up his files, especially with the unexpected unstability HDD drives are still succeptible to nowadays.

But to call him a moron? How immature.

[r21]

Yikes, thats very unlucky. I wonder how this came to be? Did he possibly play his ps3 too long or was it mechanical error? Either way, let this be a lesson to all gamers....back up your stuff before its too late!

[Wintersun616]

Protip: Backup everything you can via multiple different methods.

[blackbirdi]

use usb key as backup !!

[ProGrasTiNation]

I guess he doesn't know the ps3 hdd encryption was broke 2 years ago & his data can be recovered from a pc

[dumahim]

You can't recover what isn't there anymore.

[Dark_Overlord]

Does that work? I thought the PS3 required the param files for the saves to be recognised from an external source? Care to provide a link please :)

[adorie]

He went to a data recovery firm, they couldn't help him. I believe the abbreviation goes something like "S.O.L"

[glennco]

read the damn article

[elbeasto86]

This happened to me before I could back up my PS2 and PS1 saves. My 200+ hour FF 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 saves were all gone. It's one of my biggest fears of going all digital.

[TheGamingArt]

1st ---- HDDs crash
2nd---- We have a feature in this day and age called BACKING UP.
3rd ---- time to get PS+

[telekeneticmantis]

A modern game developer
that doesnt know to back up his HDD. Hmm, guess he's not that modern after all. Get with the times...

[jay2]

Wow, it's callled Backing up, PS + as well will auto save, you're a games dev, backing up should be second nature.

[dumahim]

I wonder why he didn't keep his original memory cards. Did he never think he might want to fire up a game on the original PS1/2?
I also wonder what their lifespan is. I had no problems with my old PS1 saves (even off of as 32X aftermarket card), but you'd think the data can only be stored for so long.

[Dlacy13g]

I find it ridiculous that there was no back up. I mean utterly ridiculous.

[synce]

I don't think anyone's dumb enough to have just 1 copy of so much savedata. I have some PS1 saves mirrored on 4 memory cards. This is an ad for Sony's cloud storage or whatever

[AIndoria]

Err, thanks for the article. Now I need to figure out a way to save my PS3 saves. My PS3 was awkwardly slow today. HAd to reboot it thrice to play BF3 -.-

[Dark_Overlord]

What p*sses me off the most are locked saves, they can only be backed up 1 of 2 ways.

1. The PS+ cloud (I have no intention of using +, no value in it for me personally)

2. Full system backup (takes hours as you can't select certain items, and a restore erases all new stuff)

Why can't they just unlock them :/

[Dark_Overlord]

Obviously some people don't want unlocked saves :/

[MightyPatapon]

Sakurai was about to start playing PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale beta.

[jd666]

Resistance 3 corrupted my hard drive losing years worth of stuff!!

[KwietStorm]

Are you talking about the fans data utility? Because it mysteriously made a corrupted file for me too. Didn't crash my whole drive though.

[jd666]

The game kept freezing my PS3 on 1st level and I lost patience with it after several hard resets, then the R3 file got stuck on 'counting', left it for nearly 5 hrs but when I went back to it it was still counting so I had no choice but to unplug it which corrupted my whole drive! Looked online and same thing happened to others too

[KwietStorm]

Ok that's not what happened to me, but why would you unplug it? Why wouldn't you hit the power button?

[jd666]

I held the power button down 1st but it didn't do anything, didn't beep or flash, it was frozen. Had no choice but to unplug it. I still want to play through R3 but I'm not chancing it!!

[MySwordIsHeavenly]

If you don't want to pay for Plus, just save them all on a flash drive.

Idiot.

[sdplisken]

if you seriously value your data then back it up
im not gonna lose sleep over my data though

[Silly gameAr]

That sucks big time. An external hd would have been a good idea to back up all that data incase something like this happened.

[Cam977]

That's why GameFaqs is your friend!

[KillerPwned]

That sucks and all but why is this even news?

[SpinalRemains138]

What kind of professional has 20 years worht of eggs in one basket?

Amateur. Not SONY's fault that he was careless. We live in a digital age, and backing things up is as important and common sense as looking before you cross the street.

[Pana]

One trying to subtly make Sony look bad without explicitly saying so.

[deafdani]

Here you have it, folks. Masahiro Sakurai, one of Nintendo's most prominent figures, is a confessed Playstation fan, one that, going by the article, immensely enjoys playing PS1, PS2 and PS3 games. And one that feels incredibly sad because he lost all that data for his PS3 HDD dying.

So, tell me. If such a important Nintendo figure can publicly aknowledge that he loves and enjoys something else besides Nintendo, what excuse do we have, as gamers, to keep on with these stupid fanboy wars? Let's learn from this man, and respect and enjoy what the big three companies have to offer us, appreciating their strenghts while also being aware of their weaknesses.

[pupa]

Maybe he knows which is the better console (wink) One for work and one for real play.

[miDnIghtEr20C_SfF]

Uhmmmm.. usually from the way this generation has gone, you shouldn't be surprised by a Nintendo guy playing his Playstations.

From what I've seen this gen, most people who have a 360 and a Wii also have a PS3. Seems most people who have a PS3... that's all they have.

I'm not surprised at all that a person who loves video games, has been playing on all consoles and enjoying them.