The 2024 Olympic Games represent perhaps the first edition, in decades, that does not have an official video game adaptation, and according to what Eurogamer reported, it seems that this was a precise choice on the part of the International Olympic Committee, which would have deliberately decided to abandon Mario & Sonic or any other more classic interpretation of the Olympics in video games to instead explore the NFT and eSport fields.
Indeed, with the games now underway for days, it is clear that there is no official video game transposition of the 2024 Olympics on the horizon. In recent years, these had been entrusted mainly to the Mario & Sonic franchise, managed by Sega in collaboration with Nintendo, which had represented in the most recent editions a sort of video game and cartoon version of the various sports disciplines.
Interviewed by Eurogamer, Lee Cocker, a producer who has worked on several installments of the Mario & Sonic series, clearly stated that the IOC has decided to abandon the franchise in question.
The IOC seems to continue with choices that are not approved by gamers
The Committee did not renew the official licensing agreement with Sega and Nintendo, causing it to expire in 2020 without covering this new edition of the Olympic Games.
“They wanted to explore other partnerships around NFTs and eSports,” Cocker explained, “Basically, the IOC wanted to bring everything back in-house and so they looked for other partners in the hope of potentially even more revenue.”
Cocker is also quite knowledgeable about the matter, considering that he previously worked for ISM Ltd, a company specialized in the management of sports and marketing rights that handled the licensing of the Olympic Games.
The only official video game of the 2024 Olympics, although not very well known, is Olympics Go! Paris 2024, a free-to-play game designed primarily for the mobile market but also available on PC, developed by the Korean team nWay and also containing NFTs in an internal marketplace, connected to the ETH L2 Wallet.
On the eSports front, the International Olympic Committee recently announced an exclusive agreement with Saudi Arabia to host the first dedicated Olympics in 2025 and the next ones for 12 years, in another decision that has sparked controversy.
