At the beginning of December, Soulja Boy decided to release a couple questionable game consoles just in time for the holidays.
He isn’t the first rapper to dabble in the gaming industry, and as a huge Fortnite fan it wasn’t all that surprising, but backlash against the emulators has been swift and fierce.
The SouljaGame Console and SouljaGame Handheld advertise 800 to 3,000 games with access to PlayStation, NeoGeo, PC, SEGA, Game Boy Advance, and NES classics. Professional YouTube gamers bought them and almost immediately began calling out Soulja Boy for his sketchy products. The criticism ranges from some of the games being rip-offs or in Chinese, to the gameplay being extremely low quality. Others reported that the larger console was not even sold with a working power cord. Really.
The biggest concern gamers point to is Nintendo’s strict licensing and copyright policies. The gaming giant only recently lifted some of its strict streaming rules for gamers on YouTube and Twitch, so many people are wondering how in the world Soulja Boy would get clearance for so many bad quality versions of Nintendo classics.
The 28-year-old rapper says anyone concerned about a possible Nintendo lawsuit has nothing to worry about. He made the consoles with a Chinese company named Anbernic, and it’s worth noting exact versions of his console are also for sale on Amazon for much cheaper. His consoles sell for $100 and $150.
“For anyone that thinks Nintendo is going to sue me you’re retarded,” he tweeted. “Nothings going to happen everything is legit.”
Aside from the tweet being offensive, it's hard to believe Nintendo would suddenly ditch its strict copyrights for the "Crank That" rapper. Only time will tell if a third-party copyright infringement lawsuit is in Soulja Boy's future.
