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History
On June 15, 2020, KFC shocked the world with the announcement of an upcoming gaming console called the KFC Console. The console which was announced to be a collaboration with PC maker Cooler Master, featured a chicken chamber that uses the heat from the PC component to keep your KFC chicken warm. The console was teased to be released on December 11, 2020 but was indefinitely delayed. While, to this date, KFC never released the console, the marketing aspect of it all was fantastic. Suddenly, KFC was on every gamer lips (literally). So even as a marketing stunt, this had been an humongous success. So there’s should be no surprise to learn that other soon followed.
This is the case for Bud Lights which pushed the concept even further. Instead of a keeping the chicken warm, the BL6 console would keep your beers cold with two built-in koozies (can coolers). The console would fully portable. Shaped as a 6-pack, it featured an integrated ASUS ZenBeam 720 Projector and. Finally, the console itself would be a pretty standard windows machine running Windows 10, an Intel Core i7 chip and 16GB of RAM. The BL6 came with 6 built-in games, including Tekken 7, Soul Calibur ViI and RBI Baseball 2020.
Release
This is where everything become a bit complicated. A single console was put to auction on ShopBeerGear.com. All proceeds from the auction would be donated to the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation’s Change is on the Menu program. With no solid validation being put into place, the auction started slowly but eventually started to be overrun by fake bids, one of which was over 2,147,483,648$ With fake bid being removed, the final winning bid was of 50,000$. Other sources point to a sell price of 5,000$, which could indicate that the previously 50k was also fake. There’s no evidence that the amount was ever paid. At the same time, the BL6 console was shortly on sale as a buy-it-now price of 3,000$, but was quickly sold out. At least two consoles were also sent to YouTuber TimTheTatman Two to promote the release. It is unknown exactly how many were made, but rumors has it that only 5 were produced.
Demise
As with most marketing stunt, the BL6 had its moment of glory. The results of the campaign were very positive with nearly 200 million impressions, 241 placements and a 12% purchase intent increase amongst gamers. This being said, even if it actually released (as opposed to the KFC Console), it didn’t attain the level of fame that the KFC Console did. Nowadays, the BL6 is just a footnote in the video game history, although a very cool one (pun intended).
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| BL6 Flyer | BL6 Specs |