Why Mario and Sonic are missing the Paris Olympics and what gamers will get instead

You might have noticed Mario andSonic aren't competing at the Paris Olympics.

That's because the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ended its long-running partnership with Nintendo and Sega, the creators of the Mario andSonic video games, which since 2007 has spawned six titles for Nintendo platforms four for each iteration of the Summer Games and two for the Winter Games.

A 2024 version was "not feasible" because of the tight timelines in the wake of the postponed 2020 Tokyo Games, the IOC said in a statement to CBC News.

The IOCis instead focusing on NFTs and esports. This time it partneredwith the San Francisco- and Seoul-based company nWayto createOlympics Go! Paris 2024, a free-to-play smartphone game which includes NFTs users can claim.

The move makes sense to one industry expert.

The IOC likely got a "better offer financially, and opted for breaking the tradition of giving the Olympic license to these Japanese companies saidSerkan Toto, the CEO of Kantan Games, an independent game industry consultancy that focuses on the Japanese market.

Toto also thinks the popularity of mobile games contributed to the decision.

Those games make up "half of the entire gaming industry," he said. "It's the biggest segment of all of the entire global gaming market."

Toto also points to the importance of when those negotiations likely started a few years ago.

The digital investments known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and esports were both "very hot" back then, he said.

"So I'm not totally surprised that the IOC actually chose this route."

In addition to the mobile game, there's a PC version of Olympics Go! Paris 2024, in which userscan compete in 12 Olympic sports, such as archery, gymnastics, 100-metre athletics, swimming and golf.

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Toto describes the IOC's new partnership as a "test balloon" that could lead to similar collaborations.

It reminds him of another sports/gaming partnership, between FIFA and Electronic Arts (EA), which was established in the 1990s and ended in 2022.

But there are differences, and when EA lost the FIFA deal, Toto doubts anyone at the company was "unhappy about it," after years of paying the soccer organization's "sky-high" licence fees.

"I think it's more critical for such an imaginary game to have the Olympics license than for a soccer game to have the FIFA license," he said.

As for esports, that venture will launch next year in Saudi Arabia, which has a 12-year agreement to host the nascent video game competition.

That event will be "very big" for the world of esports, according to Toto.

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