It looks like a thumbstick. And it actually behaves like one: the base is rounded, so the stool tilts in every direction, the way the stick that inspired it does. Not a look, a mechanism.4

The collection goes by YXSTABY: nine pieces from IKEA and Xbox, unveiled at Gamescom in August 2026.12 For the stool, the designers started from the stick's original 3D files, working with Xbox device designers. Something a thumb once pushed turns into a seat.1

The gesture that survives

Two details of the stick cross the scale change. The seat top keeps the diamond pattern of the grip.3 The texture built to stop a thumb from slipping now holds a person in place.13

Tom's Guide journalists sat on the whole collection. Double effect confirmed: the base tips with you, the rounded grip at the edge keeps you from sliding off.4

Person sitting on the green YXSTABY stool, an Xbox controller lying next to it
Tom's Guide's independent test confirms the stool tilts and the edge grip prevents sliding off.IKEA / Inter IKEA Systems B.V.

The missing spring

The thumbstick's geometry is what gives the stool its freedom. An analog stick pivots on its axis, then a spring pulls it back to center. The stool keeps the first half of that cycle: its rounded base tips with whoever is sitting on it.4

The second half is gone. Nothing recenters the stool — the product page says balance is maintained by keeping your feet on the floor.3 Which is the idea's hard limit, and also its best argument.

$49.99 in the US. Diameter: 14 ¾ inches. Height: 17 ⅜ inches. Rated load: 110 kg.3 Seat and pole are polypropylene with at least 50% recycled content; the base is recycled polypropylene plus synthetic rubber.3

The press release and the test

IKEA designer David Wahl describes a piece that tilts with you while you play.1 XBOX Wire talks about a collection that makes room for play in the living room.2 Both are communications, not measurements: no one publishes a multi-hour comfort test, or any data on how the tilting system ages.

Green YXSTABY stool in a living room, near a round table and a controller
The collection targets the living room, not a dedicated gaming corner: the piece should feel at home once the session is over.IKEA / Inter IKEA Systems B.V.

Then there is the independent test. Tom's Guide confirms exactly what the product page promises: a base that tips, a rim that holds you.4 The movement is not a sales pitch in the void.

The reference is no longer performance

IKEA already knew gaming furniture. Back in October 2021, it launched with ASUS Republic of Gamers a range of more than 30 products across six families: desks, seating, accessories aimed at PC players.5

Performance was the language back then. Designer Jon Karlsson summed up the ambition as making gamers better athletes.5

YXSTABY drops that language. The reference is no longer gear that optimizes your session — it is the controller itself, blown up and bent to another use. The stool does not promise a better posture; it asks you to relive the thumb's gesture at the scale of a body.

A want, a nostalgia, a texture detail: the collection sells an icon, not a workout.

What transfers

The method transfers well. Take a component tuned at the scale of a thumb, blow it up to the scale of a body, transfer only part of its functions: the grip becomes anti-slip, the travel becomes a tilt.

What does not transfer is the return spring. The stool leans, and the balancing stays with the user. And none of the source files ship with the product: the process remains an inspiration, not a plan you could copy.

For a fabricator, that last point may be the most interesting: knowing what to drop when you change scale is worth as much as knowing what to keep.