Ikea unveils nine-piece Xbox gaming furniture range
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Ikea has unveiled YXSTABY, a nine-piece Xbox-themed gaming furniture collection created with Microsoft to mark Xbox’s 25th anniversary. Revealed at Gamescom in Germany, the range combines recognisable controller-inspired designs with practical storage and home-gaming furniture, aiming to make gaming setups more functional without abandoning Ikea’s minimalist style.
Items include a thumbstick-shaped tilting stool, a green D-pad cushion, a D-pad stainless-steel platter, a wheeled TV stand with rear storage, and a toolbox that stores controllers and cables while doubling as a laptop stand. The collection also features controller display boxes in two colours and a wheeled side table with sliding doors; it will go on sale in the United States from 30 September.
- Ikea and Xbox launch nine-piece YXSTABY gaming range.
- Designs combine Xbox references with practical home storage.
- US sales begin on 30 September.
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Ikea's Yxstaby collection is a nine-piece range of furniture and accessories made in partnership with Microsoft's Xbox brand, timed to the console's 25th anniversary. It includes items such as a TV stand, side table, lounge chair and stool, several of which take visual cues from the Xbox controller, including its buttons and textured grip.
The collection sits within a broader trend of gaming culture moving into mainstream home design, with Ikea framing gaming spaces as places for socialising and relaxing rather than just competitive play. Xbox, owned by Microsoft, is one of the three major games console makers alongside Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo, and this collaboration is part of its wider anniversary marketing.
Full account
Ikea has partnered with Microsoft's Xbox team to launch Yxstaby, a nine-piece collection of gaming-themed furniture and accessories, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original Xbox console. The range is designed to let games consoles, controllers and cables sit comfortably within an ordinary living room rather than looking like dedicated gaming kit, continuing a design approach the Swedish retailer began exploring with its earlier Brännboll collection in 2024.
The collection includes practical pieces such as a wheeled side table with sliding doors that can store and charge controllers, a toolbox-style unit that doubles as a laptop stand while hiding cables, a rollable TV stand sized for screens up to 55 inches with a split-level shelf for consoles, and a lounge chair fitted with a webbed underside pocket for stowing controllers out of sight. Alongside these are more overtly Xbox-referencing items, including a green D-pad-shaped scatter cushion, a decorative platter modelled on a controller's D-pad, a mirrored display box, and a stool inspired by the controller's thumbstick. The palette favours neutral, Scandinavian-style tones with flashes of Xbox's signature green picking out storage compartments, a deliberate departure from the sharp edges, RGB lighting and black colour schemes typical of gaming furniture.
According to Ikea product design developer Philip Dilé, the collaboration grew out of a chance encounter in Milan two years ago, where he showed members of the Xbox design team, including Carl Ledbetter, head of Xbox devices design, the Brännboll range as an icebreaker. Dilé has said the aim was to combine Ikea's expertise in home living with Xbox's understanding of how people actually play, producing furniture people would want in their homes rather than merely tolerate for gaming purposes.
The stool has emerged as the collection's centrepiece. Ikea designer David Wahl, who reportedly queued overnight for the original Xbox console 25 years ago, obtained the controller's original 3D design files from Microsoft and reshaped the thumbstick into a seat, drawing on the mechanism of an existing Ikea product, the Nilserik extending office stool, for its rounded, height-adjustable base. Its textured surface, originally intended to stop a thumb slipping on the controller, now serves to keep the sitter from sliding. Wahl and Ledbetter both describe the Xbox team's reaction to early prototypes as immediate and enthusiastic, with the stool secured a place in the final range from the first workshop showing.
Where outlets differ
WIRED (via Dilé, Wahl and Ledbetter interviews) foregrounds the human backstory of the collaboration — the Milan meeting, the Brännboll icebreaker, and the design process behind the thumbstick stool — while The Verge concentrates on cataloguing the nine products themselves and their visual details.
The Verge explicitly frames the launch around the 25th anniversary of the original Xbox and cites Ikea's press release language directly; WIRED's account does not foreground the anniversary and instead traces the idea back to a 2024 Milan meeting between the two design teams.
WIRED positions the thumbstick stool as unambiguously 'the star' of the range, whereas The Verge treats the stool and the X-shaped cushion as joint standouts among the 'most Xbox-coded' pieces.
The Verge provides more product-list detail (e.g., mirrored display box, monitor stand, TV stand available in black or white) and describes accompanying press images, details not covered in the WIRED excerpt.
Coverage
- Wired — How Ikea Turned a Controller Thumbstick Into the Star of Its Xbox Gaming Range
- The Verge — Ikea’s Xbox collection includes a giant thumbstick stool
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