Olympics Disqualifies 'Mario & Sonic' Partnership, Swims Bafflingly Toward NFTs
Olympics Disqualifies 'Mario & Sonic' Partnership, Swims Bafflingly Toward NFTs
Oh there is definitely some medaling going on here
Hmmmm maybe Futurama was on to something when their season premiere Monday, “The One Amigo” had such an NFT-centric plot. One might have noticed that the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games began with last Wednesday’s preliminaries, but not that a new Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games installment didn’t come out in advance of it or even at all. That’s because the International Olympics Committee has walked away from its partnership with Nintendo and Sega for the long-running series, which dates back to the Beijing 2008 Olympiad, choosing to pivot to deals with new partners, other esports, and somehow NFTs. Though there were probably signs.
Lee Cocker, who worked on almost every entry in the series, has stated it was the IOC’s decision not to renew its licensing deal with Nintendo and Sega, who allowed it to lapse in 2020, after the November 2019 release of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, which could not foresee the COVID-induced delay of the actual games to 2021. "They wanted to look at other partners and NFTs and esports," he explained. "Basically the IOC wanted to bring [it] back to themselves internally and look at other partners so they would get more money." Cocker’s work was done at ISM Ltd, a sports marketing and digital media firm that managed the Olympic Games license specifically for video games.
The lineage of Mario & Sonic runs from Beijing 2008 through Vancouver 2010, London 2012, Sochi 2014, and Rio 2016 before that Tokyo 2020 end. Ironically, that means the first games after the deal lapsed were the Winter Games of Beijing 2022, and positions the skip of Pyeongchang 2018 as not a fluke for likely the rest of time. That the license lapsed after games that were held in the home country of both characters might be a coincidence, but the pivot to NFTs during their unfortunate rise in 2020 makes contextual sense. They were crashing by the 2022 Games, but as you’ll see they’ve pushed on through.
Paris 2024’s official video game tie-in hasn’t been hyped all that much, but it’s Olympics Go! Paris 2024, a free-to-play app from nWay, which previously developed Power Rangers: Legacy Wars and Battle for the Grid. The PC version was released via the Epic Games Store, though they share touch controls and basic visuals of its smartphone counterparts, according to screenshots. There are 12 sports available, including archery, gymnastics, 100m athletics, swimming and golf. The NFTs are also through nWay. I’m not going to quote the promotion but it’s achieved thanks to Magic Eden's NFT marketplace and Coinbase's Onchain Summer event, if you’re looking to sneer at those responsible.
Source: Eurogamer
At least they don't have to go swimming in the Seine...