When you’re a gamer with a design bug, IKEA thinks you will like it’s new assortment of “gaming furnishings,” due in shops in September 2024.

The furnishings big says that its 20-piece Brännboll assortment “challenges conventional gaming design” and will extra peacefully co-exist in aesthetic concord inside your private home than, say, a Secretlab gaming chair.

However the assortment appears extra like a superb advertising and marketing ploy than a real try to fulfill players the place they’re. A lot of Brännboll appears to be like like common outdated IKEA furnishings, accessorized with an Asus ROG Ally console or a Meta Quest 2 VR headset. The gaming market is at the moment estimated to be price about $282 billion within the US alone and IKEA’s solely earlier foray into the business was a small line of black and crimson gaming furnishings in 2021.

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

A rolling castor shops gaming tech and equipment.
Credit score: IKEA

Some items do truly make sense for players, like a tall standing cupboard that opens to disclose a fold-down tabletop with storage for a PC and monitor (additionally a helpful piece for folk working at house). A second merchandise, a inexperienced desk chair, resembles the design of the sort of conventional gaming chairs IKEA claims to be shifting away from. A 3rd piece, the “straightforward chair,” is described as offering a brand new “dynamic part of the digital gaming expertise” by “engag[ing] the gamer bodily, swinging backward and forward in concord with their motion.”

The core of Brännboll is the straightforward chair and several other low-to-the-ground seats, together with an inflatable donut-shaped concoction that’s so gentle it may be hung from a hook on the wall. A mouse pad, rug, and throw and storage options like a wall-mounted cupboard, wheeled castor, and a multifunctional basket spherical out the gathering.