Soulja Boy stops cranking out knock-off consoles

Rapper Soulja Boy has pulled his knock-off game consoles from his online store, less than a month after he began selling them. His website SouljaWatch.com now produces a 404 error. Soulja Boy was selling the SouljaGame console for US$200 and the SouljaGame handheld for a base price of US$100.

The console reportedly came with over 800 pre-installed games from the PlayStation, Nintendo Entertainment System, GameBoy Advance, and more. The handheld allegedly had over 3,000 pre-installed games and claimed it could also run Switch, 3DS, and Vita titles.

The rapper also sold on his now-defunct site wireless earphones that looked very much like Apple's AirPods, headphones that were similar in design to Beats headphones and smartwatches that looked like the Apple Watch.

Soulja Boy's consoles are basically bought from China with their prices raised, but without any branding by Soulja Boy. The consoles are the same as what you would get from Alibaba's retail shopping platform AliExpress.

According to Polygon, Soulja Boy's console and handheld cost US$199.99 each. Meanwhile, AliExpress has the direct-from-Anbernic versions for US$105.99 and US$72.99.

Just before he pulled the items from his store, Soulja Boy had announced in mid-January a new handheld, which he was selling at US$99. We found an exact replica of that model which looks very similar to Sony's PS Vita.

It can be bought for an even cheaper price of just US$33.59 on AliExpress.

There should be some discussion about the legality of emulators and ROMs. Emulators are apps that allow gamers to play classic games such as Mario Bros on a modern PC. Emulators are completely legal, but the content, or the ROMs or games, that are fed into the emulators reside in a legal grey area.

Both the games and the game systems they come from are copyrighted intellectual property, and Nintendo which owns the copyrights to several old games that are being distributed as ROMs have sued websites hosting these ROMs. While those sites were sharing Nintendo ROMs, the act of downloading them is also likely illegal, even if the downloaders already own those games on an old cartridge or disk. The companies that own the copyright are less likely to sue if gamers extract the ROMs and use them on a personal basis.

But in Soulja Boy's case, he is wading into dangerous territory by selling a console with pre-loaded ROMs of games. According to a review of the console by Digital Trends: "Selling a rebranded console with cheap components isn’t illegal, but what almost certainly is illegal is its game library…and given how litigious and careful Nintendo has been about its library of retro games, we’re pretty confident the company isn’t cool with Soulja Boy becoming the Soulja Game Boy."

The irony, of course, is that musical artists have campaigned for years against their songs being ripped off and copied. Back in the days of cassette tapes and before CD and MP3 players were built in as standard in cars, some artists even made a big fuss when legitimate buyers of legitimate CDs made a cassette copy so they could listen to the music while driving. How the world has changed.

Shortly after pulling the plug on his old website, it seems Soulja Boy is back to selling new products on another website.