Early in December, rapper Soulja Boy began selling multiple emulation-based game consoles, which contained games from companies such as Nintendo, Capcom, and SNK. The consoles were also apparently just cheap Chinese plug-and-play consoles that Soulja Boy had added his name to in order to mark up the price, and this decision appears to have caught the attention of some litigious companies. He’s no longer selling the consoles.
On the SouljaWatch website, which previously sold the SouljaGame console and a separate handheld system, you can no longer find any game consoles available for purchase. His watch, phone, tablet, headphones, and knockoff Apple EarPods are still for sale, but the website doesn’t give an explanation for why the consoles were pulled.
Soulja Boy was reportedly contacted by Nintendo regarding the violation of trademarks, which isn’t an unexpected development in the story. He posted a vague message on his Twitter account regarding the news, and it looks like his short stint in the game industry has come to an end.
I had to boss up, I didn’t have a choice. ????????♂️
— Soulja Boy (Drako) (@souljaboy) December 29, 2018
Nintendo is extremely protective of its franchises and back catalog of games, and was recently awarded $12 million in a lawsuit against the owners of ROM sites that had been hosting its games. In addition to the cash, Nintendo was also granted ownership of the sites.
Just a day before the decision was made to pull the consoles from Soulja Boy’s store, the rapper was still promoting them on his Twitter account. A fan told him that he was hoping to see Epic Games’ Fortnite on the system, which Soulja Boy retweeted — this is despite the fact that the systems simply come preloaded with games, rather than making use of an online store.
Soulja Boy had also added two more consoles to his online store, including the “SouljaGame FUZE” for $400. Like the previous systems, these were rebranded cheap consoles that were already available, and its design was extremely similar to Microsoft’s Xbox One S and Xbox One X. The rapper is still planning to launch an esports team in January, and we’ll be waiting with bated breath to see how that experiment turns out in the end.
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