Microsoft and Bethesda have unveiled a unique collaboration to promote Starfield at this year’s Gamescom.
As revealed by Insider Gaming, the highlight of their Starfield booth at the event is a Starfield Dream Chair – a one of a kind chair made for Bethesda by memory foam company Tempur.
Now, there’s a reason that Bethesda went with Tempur. Tempur has the patent for a specific type of memory foam that is actually in use at NASA, utilized in their spacecraft. This memory foam is not polyurethane, which is the industry standard in pillows and mattresses. Instead, it’s a unique viscoelastic material, that is sensitive to temperature and also forms shapes when pressure is applied to it. Polyurethane based pillows compress under weight, but Tempur genuinely forms new shapes based on the mold of your body.
All of this is to say, one can only imagine how comfortable the Starfield Dream Chair is if you weren’t on hand at the Gamescom event to experience it. As you can see, Tempur has built their chair around to look like a real life spacecraft cockpit. The joysticks actually work, but mostly to move the chair around. The buttons don’t do anything, but the monitor is real. While it looks like the chair is off limits for the public to actually sit in, whoever will get the chance to, will eventually feel some degree of immersion. That’s thanks in no small part to the fact that the chair is made of bona fide NASA parts.
Now some older gamers out there might faintly remember a similar idea, but for a real, full sized simulacrum of a controller. You are probably thinking of the original Xbox’s Steel Battalion, a game that was built entirely around its gigantic controller. For better or worse, you won’t get that much immersion here. While that controller and game remains the stuff of legend, gamers who actually own it can tell you it has a steep learning curve, but little reward, because it’s a very short experience.
The Starfield Dream Chair will also be a short experience, but in a different way. Microsoft and Tempur will be hosting a charity raffle before this year ends for one lucky gamer to get their hands on this literal one of a kind gaming chair. Until then, it seems the Starfield Dream Chair will be touring for a little bit more.
Starfield will be releasing on September 6, 2023, on Xbox Series X|S and Windows via Steam. It will also be Day One on Game Pass.
