Why isn’t there a 2024 Olympics video game?

The Olympic Summer Games are currently taking place in Paris. After an opening that made us think about several references in the world of video games, especially with Assassin’s Creed, something came to our mind: “What happened to the video game based on the Paris 2024 Olympics?” For almost 30 years, the greatest sporting event has had a representation in the world of video games, sometimes with more than one option.

However, Paris 2024 will not have an official video game on consoles, breaking a tradition of more than 30 years. But why is this? The run that ‘Mario & Sonic’ had had had a breath of fresh air on what one could expect from a game in the competition, and there were also titles that focused on the more realistic side. But there are more important details, as Christopher Paul, professor of communication and media at Seattle University, explained in an interview with Le Monde.

For Paul, the answer is simple: these games do not have the same appeal as other sports titles such as EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA), Madden NFL or NBA 2K because they have less time to promote them. “Sports games are extremely time-sensitive products that are only bought at the start of the sporting season. With Olympic video games, it’s even worse: The publisher only has a two-month window every four years during which it can hope to sell it,” he explained. Other factors, such as the high cost and development time, as well as the payment of an official license, make the number of copies needed to recover an investment impossible when this competition lasts only about 17 days.

The only game for Paris 2024 is the free-to-play mobile title Olympics Go! from developer nWay, which will feature microtransactions and officially licensed “commemorative” NFTs.

Top 5 Olympic Video Games in History

Let’s face it, video games based on the Olympic Games aren’t exactly known for their high scores, creative controls, and gameplay features. Maybe there are some that live in our hearts more for the nostalgia of the moment, the competitions they included, or the way they looked at the time. However, if we look at the scores of the most recent games on aggregators like Metacritic, we can see that they have not been so good, and the top 5 is made up of: