Soulja Boy’s previously reported on entry into the video game industry has officially ended, with his four emulator consoles being quietly removed from sale on his official storefront.
The consoles – rebrands of Chinese bootleg emulator systems, each filled with thousands of ROMs – were previously claimed to be on the up and up by Soulja Boy, both in a previous tweet storm and an interview with Rolling Stone he had earlier last month. But their removal – and a report of Nintendo’s interest in ceasing the operation – strongly imply otherwise. A few days ago he tweeted the following, seemingly about the situation at hand:
I had to boss up, I didn’t have a choice. ??♂️
— Soulja Boy (#SODMG) (@souljaboy) December 29, 2018
Additionally, a website registered early in December, simply called ‘SouljaGame.com’, now redirects to Nintendo’s 3DS website. It is unclear if the site was ever legitimate, or if it is the work of a troll making fun of the situation: SouljaGame and the official merchandise website, SouljaWatch, were both registered via GoDaddy, but two days apart. At any rate, it seems that Soulja’s been cranked out of the video game industry.
Emulation consoles are known to be cheap, versatile products, capable of playing a variety of games from a variety of systems. The consoles Soulja Boy rebranded in particular are Chinese in origin. Emulation consoles became popular amongst Chinese consumers during the 90’s, with knock-offs like ‘The Little Tyrant’ gaining market dominance over official products – Chinese gamers predominantly frequented arcades at the time, so expensive home consoles were less desirable. And with the nation’s ban on competing consoles in the 00’s, these knock-offs flourished unopposed for many years. But with this ban now lifted, and China’s tightening copyright laws, the days of unlicensed emulation machines is coming to a close – there, at least.