Ikea's new furnishings line tries to get avid gamers out of the basement

When you're a gamer with a design bug, IKEA thinks you'll love a brand new assortment of “gaming furnishings” coming to shops in September 2024.

The furnishings large says its 20-piece Branbol assortment “challenges conventional gaming design” and will co-exist extra peacefully in aesthetic concord inside your private home than the Secretlab gaming chair.

However this assortment feels extra like a glorified advertising and marketing ploy than a real effort to fulfill avid gamers the place they’re. A lot of Branbol seems to be like common outdated IKEA furnishings, outfitted with an Asus ROG Alley console or a Meta Quest 2 VR headset. The gaming market within the US alone is at the moment estimated to be price round $282 billion and Ikea's solely earlier foray into the trade was a small collection of black and purple gaming furnishings in 2021.

A tall standing cupboard has a hidden fold-down tabletop with storage for a PC and monitor.
Credit score: Ikea

A rolling casters retailer gaming tech and equipment.
Credit score: Ikea

Some items actually make sense for avid gamers, like a tall standing cupboard that opens as much as reveal a fold-down tabletop with storage for a PC and monitor (additionally a helpful piece for folks working at dwelling ). A second merchandise, a inexperienced desk chair, resembles the design of the form of conventional gaming chairs that IKEA claims to maneuver away from. A 3rd piece, the “simple chair”, is described as offering a brand new “dynamic element” of the digital gaming expertise by “bodily partaking the gamer, swinging backward and forward according to their motion”. .

The core of the Branbol is the simple chair and several other low-to-the-ground seats, together with an inflatable donut-shaped mix that's so gentle it may be hung from a hook on the wall. Storage options like a mouse pad, rug, and wall-mounted cupboard, wheeled casters, and a multifunctional basket spherical out the gathering.