It’s a page that is turning and the end of a series that is almost twenty years old: there will be no Mario & Sonic video game for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Instead, we will be treated to a mobile game… and NFTs.
The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games will apparently shake up the codes and break some conventions. And while it is good to renew traditions to keep them alive and in tune with the times, what comes after them is not always pleasant. No, we are not talking about the opening ceremony that has caused so much ink to flow, but about the end of another institution, closely linked to Olympism for almost twenty years: the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games video games.
Indeed, the International Olympic Committee, the body that manages the rights related to the competition, has taken the bold decision not to renew the license granted to Nintendo and Sega to develop a new video game sending their well-known mascots to compete for gold. This is the Eurogamer site, in an article dated July 30, 2024which reports the information, providing along the way some tasty explanations… or appalling ones, depending on your point of view.
According to information the media has gathered from Lee Cooker, a contributor who worked on the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series, the IOC made the decision in 2020 not to renew its partnership with Sega and Nintendo and to turn to “other partners to get more money”. So, even if the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games games have been a great success throughout their six installments, it is quite normal to want to entrust the contract to new teams in order to renew the formula. And given the colossal means of the IOC, the result can only be good.
Or not. Because not everyone can be Nintendo or Sega and developing a video game is no easy feat, especially when the initial motivations seem so inglorious. Instead of a game premium on console, so it’s a free-to-play on mobile titled Olympics GO! Paris 2024 which will be offered to us. And if this is not a defect in itself, it is clear, given the images on the game’s official page on the Play Store, that the video game landscape has undoubtedly lost out in the exchange.
Even putting aside these somewhat petty aesthetic considerations, one can only be dismayed to learn that the title not only intends to sand our retinas, but also to pick our pockets by palming off NFTs on us. Indeed, to the great delight of players and sports fans, it will therefore be possible to purchase in-game NFTs. “Paris 2024 commemorative NFT digital pins officially licensed by nWay”, then “add these digital gems to [sa] collection via Magic Eden’s user-friendly NFT marketplace as part of Coinbase’s Onchain Summer event ». An entire program.
A visionary consulting firm will have succeeded in convincing the IOC that selling non-fungible tokens, an “innovation” that we had hoped had disappeared into the dustbins of technological history, was better than re-enlisting with the two historical players Nintendo and Sega to create the video game that will serve as a showcase for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Let’s bet that this bold choice will be crowned with great success.