A new report suggests that the fact there’s no Mario & Sonic game this year is at least partially thanks to the Olympic authorities wanting to explore the possibilities of NFTs.
According to Eurogamer (which cites a conversation with series veteran Lee Cocker), the International Olympic Committee (IOC) let its agreements with Nintendo and Sega lapse in order to explore what Cocker calls “other partners and NFTs and esports”.
As Cocker tells it, the reason behind the agreements lapsing is a pretty sad one; the IOC wanted to explore opportunities to “get more money” through signing up with other partners in order to “bring it back to themselves internally”.
It seems that the Mario & Sonic series won’t be keeping up with the times, as no Paris Olympics tie-in has been announced. Instead, the IOC is focusing on free-to-play game Olympics Go! Paris 2024, which is developed by nWay, a company that also offers the chance to purchase Paris Olympics-themed NFTs on its website.
If it is true that the IOC abandoned Mario & Sonic for what is essentially the chance to make a quick buck, then I think we’ve lost something special. The Mario & Sonic series isn’t exactly high art, but it’s reliably fun, especially with friends, so not getting the chance to play any more games in this series is a tragic loss, if you ask me. That goes double if the alternative is a free-to-play mobile game that’s propping up NFTs.
It’s doubly unfortunate because there’s not much that’s plugging the gap left by the Mario & Sonic series. The aforementioned free-to-play game doesn’t really offer the same experience, so we’ll have to wait for the indie sphere to come up with something similar. Let’s hope there are enough Mario & Sonic fans out there for that.
Not only is there no Mario & Sonic game for this year’s Olympic Games, but there’s no official game along the lines of the snappily-titled Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: Official Video Game either, likely for the same reasons outlined above. Sadly, it looks like we’re going to have a bit of a wait on our hands for the next premium Olympics tie-in.
In the meantime, if you want to relive the glory days of the Mario & Sonic franchise, you can grab Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 right here on Nintendo Switch.
