Ikea has taken another swing at a gaming gear collection, but this time it brought in a ringer: Xbox. The new nine-piece range, revealed at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, came about not through whiteboard marketing brainstorms, but a meeting between the Xbox and Ikea design teams at Milan Design Week in 2024.
\n\nHearing the Xbox team—including Carl Ledbetter, head of Xbox devices design—was in Milan at the same time, Ikea product design developer Philip Dilé wanted to show off the company's latest creations, the Brännboll gaming collection, that pleasingly stepped away from sharp edges, RGB lighting, and a black color palette.
\n\n“That was a bit of an icebreaker," Dilé tells WIRED. "We were exploring gaming, so we wanted to team up with experts who really understand how people play. We know a lot about life at home, but we wanted to specifically understand how you design for gamers.”
\n\nTwo years on, Ikea's new Yxstaby range is the fruit of that Milan meeting. The collection takes the ethos of 2024's Brännboll, where gaming gear sits well within home decor and doesn't look like it belongs in a bachelor's basement. But it also moves it forward by taking liberal inspiration from Xbox…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/
