Nintendo and Sega's Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Series Ends; IOC Turns to NFT and Esports

TapTechNews July 31st news, the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series jointly created by Nintendo and Sega will no longer release new works. According to Eurogamer, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided not to renew the license for this series of games. This means that this classic game series that has accompanied almost every Summer and Winter Olympics since 2007 will officially bid farewell to the Olympic stage.

According to Lee Cocker, a former developer of this series of games, the IOC wants to take back the license and find other partners by itself to gain more revenue. However, surprisingly, the new partner of the IOC is actually NFT and esports, which are two fields not known for their profitability at present.

The Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is a series of games jointly developed by Sega and Nintendo. Usually, each new work will add an at XX Olympics as the subtitle after the game name, such as in the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. This is a sports game collection mode. There are several different Olympic sports events for players to choose in the game. Players can choose other stars from Nintendo and SEGA besides Mario and Sonic to compete for the champion on the Olympic field. And each work will add different characteristic events according to the corresponding Olympics.

In order to cooperate with the Paris Olympics, the IOC has cooperated with nWay, the developer of Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, to launch the mobile game Olympics Go! Paris 2024. The game contains several mini-games based on Olympic events, and players can also obtain the officially authorized Paris 2024 commemorative NFT digital badge.

The combination of esports and the Olympics is not new. As early as 2017 and 2018 when esports was at its peak, the IOC held many summits to discuss how to include esports events in the Olympics. In 2021, the Olympics held a medal event named Olympic Virtual Series for the first time, including events such as baseball, sailing, cycling and racing. In June this year, the IOC announced that it will hold an Olympic Esports Series during the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the competition will be held in 2025, and the host country is the controversial but highly popular esports market - Saudi Arabia.