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Soulja Boy now sells his own (sketchy) video game consoles

If you were wondering what the rapper has been up to since 2007...

Gordon Gottsegen CNET contributor
Gordon Gottsegen is a tech writer who has experience working at publications like Wired. He loves testing out new gadgets and complaining about them. He is the ghost of all failed Kickstarters.
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Gordon Gottsegen
2 min read
Xbox One E3 Showcase Party

Soulja Boy playing Halo 5 at an Xbox One E3 showcase.

 Mark Davis/Getty Images for Microsoft

In case reaching No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 2007 wasn't enough, the rapper Soulja Boy is getting into a new trade: video game consoles. Soulja Boy now sells two different consoles on his website, the self-branded SouljaGame Console and SouljaGame Handheld.

Read: How the Nintendo Switch make you feel like a kid with a Game Boy again.

Kudos to Soulja Boy for his entrepreneurial spirit, but a closer look at the consoles may raise eyebrows. The SouljaGame Console is advertised as running "PS/NEOGEO/PC/SEGA/GBA/NES Video Games" and coming with 800 preinstalled games. Meanwhile, the SouljaGame Handheld says it supports "Switch/3DS/Vita/NEOGEO/GBC/Gameboy/GBA" and comes with 3,000 built-in games.

This sounds a little fishy, are Nintendo Switch games actually included with the Soulja Boy's console? It seems like the console emulates ROMs of its games, but Soulja Boy's website doesn't include a list of game titles or say if these games are officially licensed. And considering that Nintendo has been cracking down on ROM piracy recently, this could be bad news for the SouljaGame consoles.

CNET hasn't gotten its hands on the consoles, and hasn't been able to independently verify their advertised claims.

The listings also say that the consoles are manufactured by Chinese company Anbernic. If you do some digging you can find the same Anbernic consoles on sites like Amazon or Alibaba for a fraction of Soulja Boy's price (which is $100 for the handheld, $150 for the console).

Despite all this, Soulja Boy tweeted that he made $250,000 off of console sales in less than 24 hours.

Soulja Boy's website SouljaWatch also sells other tech products like smartwatches, wireless earbuds, over-the-ear headphones and even a Soulja-branded smartphone.

Soulja Boy's representatives, Nintendo and Sony didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.