Gamescom kicks off today in Cologne, Germany, and among the many big game debuts, hands-on demos, and major announcements is a new kind of reveal: Xbox is partnering with Ikea to sell an exclusive set of Xbox-inspired furniture and accessories that you can buy starting this fall. But, according to Xbox, the new collection goes far beyond the typical gamer chair and desk setup.
Carl Ledbetter, head of design at Xbox, has been at Microsoft for more than 30 years (dating back to the days of the IntelliMouse) and is responsible for designing consoles like the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Ledbetter led the charge with the Ikea collaboration and says the partnership isn’t as unusual as you might suspect . I spoke to Ledbetter exclusively at gamescom ahead of the reveal of YXSTABY (get it?) a “nine-piece collection designed for gaming at home,” and found out that Xbox’s ties to Ikea go back further than you might expect.
“The piece of furniture that we use as our de facto test for any console design is the Billy bookcase from Ikea,” Ledbetter says. “So believe it or not, it's a natural fit. I’ve spent all my time [at Xbox] looking at input, controllers, the console, how things fit into the home. [That] matters when you design a console, [the] horizontal and vertical position. [So] this goes back years. The philosophy that we share for designing products at Xbox and at Ikea are nearly identical. So it was like a love connection.”
IGN can exclusively reveal a look at the entire collection, which features nine pieces, including chairs with console pockets, thumbstick-shaped stools, a D-Pad inspired platter to hold your controller, X-shaped pillows, and more. Ledbetter says that planning a series of pieces intended to be picked up, sat on, leaned against, and otherwise interacted with came with a surprising challenge.
“Xbox and Ikea, they both have scale,” Ledbetter says. “We designed for millions of players around the world. Ikea’s already there. The thing that is different, at least for my team and designing this line, was taking into consideration the flat pack. So Ikea, of course [uses a flat pack] in order to ship these things all around the world. When you buy a console, the most you have to do is plug it in and turn it on. But in this case, you have some assembly required. It was just fascinating to work with them side by side and see how to problem-solve. That was pretty fun.”Ledbetter says that, although bringing a collection of furniture to life is inherently different than building a new console, his overarching design philosophy didn’t change.
“First and foremost, the product's got to work,” Ledbetter says. “It has to solve real problems. Whether it's a controller or a piece of furniture, it's the same thing. The second thing is, for gamers, particularly when they're playing Xbox games at home, it's about immersion. It’s in the game you see on the screen and in the controller you hold in your hand. But if you think about it, it's everything around you. The products you sit on, the things that hold your TV, etc. We started talking about those challenges for players and immediately started coming up together with ideas. We tried to find balance.
“The question that the Ikea designers had for me was, ‘Carl, what are the iconic elements of Xbox?’ Number one is the controller. While we've improved it and changed it over time, it's very recognizable. And so there are elements that people interact with on the controller that they just sort of bubbled up to the top. The D-pad was one. So you see the D-pad platter, the D-pad pillow. And of course the thumbstick was just right there. It's such an interactive and engaging thing. We landed on the thumbstick stool.”
Ledbetter says that for hardcore Xbox fans, there will be plenty of Easter eggs when the YXSTABY collection hits stores this fall.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-design-chief-carl-ledbetter-ikea
