DeAndre Cortez Way, known by his rapper persona Soulja Boy, appeared on a panel as part of Complex’s Everyday Struggle this week, mostly to talk about his business of selling consoles. Yes, those same cheap knock-off consoles that he’s marking up heavily to turn a profit. The same ones Nintendo got pulled from sale after a legal battle.
Yes, Souljaboy is still bragging about his dropshipping nonsense, and making money and pumping his ego seems to be his entire focus for this interview. At several points where he’s trying to vaguely allude to sales made to unnamed companies, despite showing a screenshot which allegedly shows sales, some of the panelists are incredulous.
There’s a lot of tension and nursing of bruised egos going on here, and it’s kind of sad to watch the whole narrative unravel. And even during the course of the interview the group asks questions, calling out some inconsistencies, like him not wearing his own SouljaWatch or the boxes for his console being generic with no branding, you can just tell that Mr. Way is trying hard to keep his composure. There’s also some blatantly funny moments where the BS is being piled on pretty thick. I got a good laugh when he described Sony, a Japanese company, as “the white people at PS4.” Also, I for one did not know that Mr. Way had purchased a Subway restaurant, one which he admitted to being poorly managed to the point of employees not even bothering to show up. It sounds like Mr. Way is trying to do too many things at once.
But let’s get back to the gaming side of things. DJ Akademiks asked Soulja Boy if Epic Games’ Fortnite was currently one of the games included on the Soulja Console. “Yes, we’re working on it,” Soulja Boy responded. “Not this one, but on the next one you can,” he said referring to the next iteration of the device. So not only does the current Soulja Console support “800 PS4 games,” but soon it’ll also be able to play the hottest game around. For context, 800 games is nearly half the current library of the PS4. And teardowns of his most recent $100 offering the SouljaGame Handheld, which is actually just the ~$50 CoolBaby RS97 or RetroGame, showed it to barely be capable of accurately emulating some GBA and Super Nintendo games. One has to seriously doubt whether the next SouljaGame offering will be any better. Check out the interview down below.
But here’s the real kicker, we all know that these cheap emulation machines are not going to be able to deliver on these promises, and Soulja Boy will continue yelling at people online about how important he is. Regardless of what’s truth or a lie, and it’s pretty hard to tell with all the stories coming from this guy, it seems like Mr. Way is going to continue trying to push his business to the next level.
As of writing Souljawatch.com is down entirely, and the blame seems to fall on a former business partner, who Way claims hacked the site. Shopify Support has publicly stated that they’re working with him to restore his website, so only time will tell what the future holds.