Xbox and Ikea's YXSTABY Collection Turns a Thumbstick Into a Stool

Moving a console into a family living room is a negotiation, not a setup process. Where does it go? Does it fit the shelf? Will somebody complain that it looks like a spaceship parked on the TV stand? I've had that conversation more than once, usually while my nephew stands there holding a controller, waiting for the adults to finish being adults.

So the Gamescom announcement that got me today isn't a trailer. It's a couch cushion.

Xbox and Ikea are putting out a collection called YXSTABY - Xbox-inspired furniture and accessories built around 25 years of the brand, arriving this fall. The pieces teased so far are exactly as silly as they should be: a giant thumbstick that doubles as a stool, and D-pad cushions in green and black. No prices yet, and the full range is being shown off at Gamescom in Cologne, where Xbox has taken over a hall packed with playable games.

Who this is actually for

Not the RGB battlestation crowd, I don't think. That corner of gaming is already drowning in furniture designed to look like a fighter jet cockpit, and none of it wants to sit in a room where somebody else watches the news.

This feels aimed squarely at the shared living room. My nephew's "setup" is the corner of a sofa and a coffee table that is, at any given moment, holding two controllers, a glass of juice and a Switch. A squishy D-pad cushion belongs in that room. A stool the right height for a kid who refuses to sit properly belongs in that room. That's a much friendlier idea than another chair with a headrest shaped like a spoiler.

Carl Ledbetter, who runs design at Xbox, led the collaboration, and he's said the partnership isn't as unusual as you might suspect. He's been at Microsoft for more than 30 years - back far enough to have worked on the IntelliMouse - and he's the person responsible for how the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S actually look. So this isn't a licensing deal someone rubber-stamped. It's the hardware team playing in a different material.

I'm still not going to pretend an oversized thumbstick stool is a brilliant use of your money. We haven't seen a single price, and novelty furniture has a habit of costing more than novelty deserves. If YXSTABY lands at the fun end of Ikea's pricing, it'll turn up in a lot of gaming corners, including plenty that belong to people who've never touched an Xbox. If it lands at collector-item pricing, it becomes a photo people share and nobody buys.

What I like is the tone. Xbox has spent a good while now arguing with itself about what an Xbox even is: a box, a store, an app, a logo on somebody else's console. A green foam D-pad you can throw at your brother is the most relaxed that brand has felt in ages.

Now show me the price tags.

Image: Kyu3a / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xbox_Series_X%E3%81%A8Series_S.jpg