Let’s be honest, when you think of American hip-hop artist Soulja Boy, you think of “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”. You don’t immediately think of one of his side ventures in the gaming industry, which was, of course, called SouljaGame. What a time to be alive.
In truth, Soulja Boy moving into the gaming industry would hardly be the biggest surprise considering the existence of games such as “50 Cent: Bulletproof” and “50 Cent: Blood On The Sand”. However, it appeared that Soulja Boy was releasing “his own” consoles and selling them through a website, still not wholly ridiculous.
The thing that makes this case curious is the fact that Soulja Boy was actually buying knock-offs of various gaming consoles and then selling them at an increased price. Perhaps some people would buy the consoles due to the appeal of buying them from the Soulja Boy brand; these people would still be let down.
The “budding video game entrepreneur” ran into many problems whilst running the SouljaGame brand. These problems affected both Soulja Boy and the poor souls who bought game consoles from him. If our digital agency worked like this, we’d be out of business.
Poor Quality by Soulja Boy
Of course, with the consoles being knock-offs from Chinese manufacturer Anbernic, users of these consoles were bound to encounter a series of issues when using them. Reviewers of the consoles would tend to find the same problems.
Whilst reviewing the Anbernic HD Game 800-in-One Console, aka the SouljaGame Console, Spawn Wave identified that many pre-installed games on the SouljaGame Console couldn’t run due to extensive amounts of frame tearing when operating the games. This rendered many of them wholly unplayable or uncomfortable to play. Besides, the system wasn’t even playable straight out of the box because Spawn Wave also added that there was not a power lead in the box, meaning customers had to buy their power cables after already paying for the system.
The controllers that were provided looked more akin to third-party PlayStation 2 controllers, with a less ergonomic directional pad and more button sticking than their original Sony counterparts. The boxes for the product also conveyed that the system supported a 4K resolution, which could be identified as a lie from the outset, with the system supporting, at most, 720p resolution. Spawn Wave also noted that the console had a “cheap” internal board and was “weak” internally.
Reviewers of the system have also stated that the overall emulation experience is abysmal with lag and stuttering, which is more severe when compared to other available emulators. Many individuals have experienced issues with actually saving their games, causing them to lose their progress unless they use in-system save states.
The drop-shipped SouljaGame consoles are inferior in terms of quality by all accounts. When reviewing these systems’ pricing structure, it makes for grim yet slightly hilarious reading. Especially when you consider that emulators on mobile phones and other devices are much more powerful and effective than these Chinese off-brands’.
Soulja Boy’s Reskinned Consoles, Poor Pricing, Outright Lies.
One might be able to forgive Soulja Boy’s hubris and take his new gaming consoles at face value more quickly if he was selling them at a reasonable price; after all, they are just glorified emulators at this point. Despite this, Soulja Boy had decided that he would try and trick as much money as he could from the SouljaGame Consoles.
If you were to view the Anbernic HD Game 800-in-One Console on Amazon, you would find the small Chinese console is available for a slightly high but not completely ridiculous price of $105.00. This is the price that is given directly from the manufacturer. You think Soulja Boy may have brought his price closer in line with this, especially when you consider that the branding he added to the consoles merely amounted to a few stickers.
You would be wrong in this assumption as the American rapper began selling the console for $199.99 on his store. Even more ridiculous is that Soulja Boy was also selling the handheld version of the Anbernic gaming console for the same price when the Chinese manufacturer was charging a much more respectable $72.99. Soulja Boy was putting over $100 of markup on the handheld consoles! I feel for the poor souls who purchased from this man.
When people realized that Soulja Boy was not doing anything genuinely different with these consoles and was still selling them at a ludicrous markup, they weren’t delighted. It would be much easier to go through these consoles’ manufacturer if you were looking to have an emulated ROM experience, rather than paying top dollar to an American Hip-Hop artist that clearly has no understanding of copyright laws.
It was quite interesting that Soulja Boy claimed that the SouljaGame Console had over 800 games pre-installed onto the device. It was interesting because this was simply an outright lie and wholly removed from the matter’s actual truth. The real case was that Soulja Boy would have a few dozen games downloaded onto the system, with these games repeated in sequence in the menu until the number of games on the system reached 800.
As can be expected from such a business move, legal troubles appeared to crop up incredibly quickly for Soulja Boy and the SouljaGame brand.
Legal Issues Faced By Soulja Boy
One of the most significant selling points that Soulja Boy was trying to hammer home with his line of gaming consoles was the large number of games that would come pre-installed with the glorified emulator. It was claimed that the console came with hundreds of games pre-installed and others came with thousands of games installed. The problem with this was that neither Nintendo nor Sega permitted Soulja Boy to use their intellectual properties. The “games” were emulated ROMs that had been illegally stored onto the devices.
How Soulja Boy thought that this would be a long-lived venture, I’m not particularly sure. Eventually, Nintendo caught wind of what Soulja Boy had been doing and sent the rapper a letter detailing that by selling the consoles. He could violate the American Trademark Counterfeiting Act 1984. For first time offenders of this act, a person could receive up to ten years imprisonment and up to 20 years for multiple-time offenders. The rapper vehemently denied these reports’ veracity and insisted that his operations in procuring and selling these consoles were 100% legitimate.
In an interview conducted by Rolling Stone, Soulja Boy said this.
“Honestly, I feel that everything is 100 per cent legit, and there will be no reason for any legal ramifications or anything like that… what we’re doing is legit. It’s been researched. Everything is confirmed that it’s a green light, and we’re good.”
It seems like some of Soulja Boy’s customers did not get the memo about everything being legit. This is because there were widespread reports of SouljaGame customers not receiving their products.
In the end, it seems like the artist finally succumbed to the mounting pressure from critics and businesses alike and pulled the consoles from his website. The SouljaGame website was also reported to be redirecting to a Nintendo site. Despite this, Soulja Boy has not stopped selling knock-off products. Soulja Boy has since been advertising SouljaPods (knock-off AirPods), SouljaPads (knock-off Ipads) and SouljaWatches (knock-off smartwatches).
Whether or not the artist encounters legal troubles with other companies remains to be seen, although you would think that he may be more careful the next time around.
Conclusion
The era of SouljaGame and Soulja Boy’s overall entry into the gaming industry was short-lived, and if we’re sincere, bitter, rather than bitter-sweet. The artist tried to use his name and general renown to drop ship cheap, low-quality Chinese games consoles to the masses at an obscenely increased price.
Customers were not amused by the inflated prices, poor customer service and defect-ridden product, even though a “mainstream artist pushed it”. Nintendo was equally unamused by this artist’s illegal attempt to appropriate their intellectual property for profit.
There is a part of me that wants to applaud the entrepreneurial spirit of Soulja Boy, trying to break into the gaming industry, which is notoriously competitive and challenging to do. Despite this, I cannot do so with good conscience because the entire brand and business model was a complete car crash from the start.
If Soulja Boy had decided even quickly to consult a lawyer who specialises in copyright law, he would have soon discovered that he could not sell a system with a bunch of bootlegged video games pre-downloaded and that a big lawsuit would come his way if he decided to go too far in that venture.
I will likely still “crank that Soulja Boy” as the world-famous artist has said that if I do not, it will crank me. I will not, however, look back at the SouljaGame brand and consoles with any fondness or admiration.