Image: Sega
You can blame NFTs for the absence of the Mario & Sonic Olympic game franchise this year.
The Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games franchise has released a new installment for every Summer Olympics event held since 2008, but the franchise has been conspicuously absent this year.
That’s no accident, as the International Olympics Committee has reportedly shelved its gaming mascots in favour of NFTs this year.
Mario and Sonic binned by the Olympics in favour of NFTs
This year’s Summer Olympics will come and go without a new Mario and Sonic game, but that decision didn’t come from developer Sega’s end. According to Lee Cocker (thanks, Eurogamer), a former executive producer at a marketing firm responsible for managing the Olympics’ videogame licensing, the International Olympics Committee (IOC) made the decision to purposefully cut its former gaming mascots out this year.
Cocker explained that the IOC opted out of renewing its game licensing deal with Nintendo and Sega, which put an end to the Mario and Sonic Olympic game franchise as the deal expired in 2020. Cocker told Eurogamer that “they wanted to look at other partners and NFTs. Basically, the IOC wanted to bring [it] back to themselves internally and look at other partners so they would get more money."
We’ve already seen the fruits of this new strategy, in the form of nWay’s “officially licensed commemorative Paris 2024 NFT Digital Pin collection.
The company’s website says that “you can claim a legendary or epic pin showcasing the Paris 2024 mascot holding a flag and waving."
The Summer Olympics also has a new free-to-play tie-in game called Olympics Go! Paris 2024 out on mobile platforms and PC. The game is developed by GlobalStep and Nvizzio Creations, and published by nWay. It does not feature Mario and Sonic in any capacity, sadly.
The IOC has also announced its first Olympic Esports Games for 2025, held in partnership with the National Olympic Committee of Saudi Arabia.