What would you do if you wanted to make a gaming seat for console players who cared about their fitness? That’s what Puma has tried to answer, in a particularly interesting way.
The sporting apparel brand has teamed up with Playseat to create the PUMA Game Seat, a bucket-like seat for console gaming — or as they call it, “sitting gear”. “We have to start seeing gamers as athletes with requirements particular to their sports as a sports company,” PUMA’s global director of innovation, Charles Johnson, said. So the answer to that is a seat that rocks back and forward to support three main sitting positions. In the video below, PUMA’s designer described them as “cruising” or “comfortable mode”, a second mode when players feel like they’re being attacked, and one when players are “attacking”, or leaning closer into the screen.
The bit that’s missing amongst all of this is that most people don’t have a free spot in front of their TV — most Australians own only one or two TVs, and there’s generally a bed/couch/lounge in front of that, meaning any separate seat would be offset from the centre of the screen.
So that’s a bit weird. Also weird is the fact that it’s basically a modern rocking chair. The look reminded me a little of a moulded bicycle seat; others in Slack thought it looked like an oversized baby seat. It’s certainly not something you’d want to wear a dress in, unless you’re at home alone, in which case you can wear as little or as much as you like.
Whatever it’s truly inspired by, it’s certainly different. The Playseat doesn’t have an official release date, with Puma currently running a signup program on their site to seed prototypes of the seat out to various gamers after answering a short survey about what games you like to play.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some of these materials get reused in a more normal office chair. Puma’s focusing a lot more on regular gaming of late — the company just announced a two-year partnership with Melbourne esports team ORDER earlier this week. Maybe Puma could make their own gaming onesie?
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