NFTs
Olympic committee shut down Mario and Sonic series to pursue NFTs and eSports: report
With the 2024 Olympic Games taking place in Paris right now, you might be wondering: where’s the Mario & Sonic companion game? After all, we regularly get sports games featuring Nintendo and Sega’s mascots since 2007.
Unfortunately, it appears that the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has worked with the two Japanese gaming giants for many years, has decided to go in a different direction.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Mario & Sonic producer Lee Coker said the IOC “wanted to look at other partners, NFTs and eSports” following the launch of Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
“Basically, the IOC wanted to bring [it] turn inward and look for other partners so they could get more money.”
On the one hand, it makes sense that the IOC would want to cut out two big (and likely expensive) partners like Nintendo and Sega, especially since Mario & Sonic would only be released on the former’s consoles.
But on the other hand, there are the questionable “NFTs” (non-fungible tokens) of all this. Sure, the idiotic and fraudulent tech fad is effectively deadalthough, to be fair to the IOC, many companies and organizations did take an interest in them between 2020 and 2021. So it’s not exactly surprising that the IOC was looking into NFTs around this time, however ill-advised it may have been.
Interestingly, the IOC actually sought a tie-in game for Paris 2024, a free-to-play game Android, iOS It is computer title called Olympics Go! Paris 2024. In it, you can participate in 12 different mini-games based on Olympic sports, including archery, swimming, golf and fencing.
However, it doesn’t seem to have been promoted much, even with us in MobileSyrup hadn’t heard of this game until Eurogamer pointed it out. What the IOC is promoting, however, are in-game NFTs:
“You can claim a Legendary or Epic pin featuring the Paris 2024 mascot holding a flag and waving. You can add these digital gems to your collection via Magic Eden’s user-friendly NFT marketplace as part of Coinbase’s Onchain Summer event. Make sure you have a wallet that supports ETH L2 Base to secure yours today!”
Fortunately, the latest sonic It is Mario the games didn’t have NFTs.
In related news, check out our analysis of where to stream the 2024 Paris Olympics in Canada.
Image credit: Sega
Source: Eurogamer
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