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IKEA's cardboard console cutouts make it easier to pick the right entertainment center

By Satsuki Then/

When it comes to furniture that you have to assemble yourself, IKEA is probably the most famous retailer out there. The company tends to make furniture that's of decent quality while being notoriously difficult to assemble. Anyone on the hunt for a new entertainment center for the living room to hold a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will want to know if the consoles will fit.

That is a valid concern considering how large both of the next-generation consoles are. The good news is IKEA stores reportedly have large cardboard cutouts representing the exact dimensions of both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles allowing shoppers to see exactly where and how well the game systems fit into an entertainment center they are considering.

The funniest part of the cardboard cutouts is a sentence on the side of the PlayStation 5 cutout that reads, "Which IKEA media storage unit will be able to fit my new, meme-ishly oversized gaming console?" We assume before the cutouts were available, employees at the store were inundated with shoppers asking if the new game consoles would fit.

There certainly have been plenty of people out there who are able to get their hands on one of the hard-to-find game consoles only to find it wouldn't fit in their entertainment center. The challenge in fitting the PlayStation 5, in particular, is that while it can be placed vertically or horizontally, no matter which direction you orient it, the stand has to be attached.

The curved plastic on the console's front also makes it more difficult to tuck inside the entertainment center. Offering cardboard cutouts is an excellent move on IKEA's part. No one wants to buy an entertainment center or order one online, only to get home and realized their components wouldn't fit.

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