Do you need special shoes for console gaming? Probably not. Given that you’ve put a special gaming chair in the living room and gaming lights on the TV, might as well go all in and purchase the PUMA Active Gaming Footwear.
Billed as a “gaming sock,” the footwear is designed specifically with console gamers in mind, providing all the necessary comfort and support required when they slam their feet on the floor after a fatal mistake or stand up to scream invectives at the TV like an absolute crazy person. Whether you spend your console time button mashing in fighting games, relying on aim-assist at FPS titles, or exploring the open maps of action-adventure games, this thing will coddle your feet better than whatever sock, sandal, or shoe you actually wear when gaming. Or something like that.
The PUMA Active Gaming Footwear is a sock-like shoe with an engineered knitted upper for a comfortable wear that also allows your feet to breathe, so it doesn’t sweat and develop a stink. TPU skin gives the shoes some added support, while a sock-like fit achieved using the outfit’s custom last should provide a much better feel than traditional sneakers. According to PUMA, the shoe provides a wraparound grip in the medial of the feet, a supportive hold in the lateral section, and reinforced stability in the heel. We’re not entirely sure why you would need those for gaming, but we assume it’s going to help you frag out like a madman somehow.
While it’s designed to feel like socks, it also need to function like a pair of shoes, so they threw in a low-profile rubber outsole to provide grip, while a co-molded dual-density foam serves as the insole, improving the comfort and increasing the shoe’s torsion control. All in all, it looks like a pair of socks with some extra material on the sole, so it’s pretty weird, albeit not that unusual in today’s footwear scene.
In the product page, PUMA claims that the Active Gaming Footwear has been designed for both indoor and in-arena use, just in case you have dreams of being a competitive console gamer. We know, there isn’t much competitive console gaming outside of fighting games, but that landscape changes all the time anyway, so you might end up being a gaming pro all the same. Hey, a console pleb can always dream.
We’re not entirely sure what makes this more suited to console players than PC gamers, since, you know, they both plop down on their chairs and wield their control peripherals of choice anyway. Truth be told, this looks like a comfortable pair of shoes – one we wouldn’t mind wearing on a lazy Sunday with our favorite sweatpants while insulting people’s moms and grandmas on COD multiplayer. So yeah, we guess we’re ready for some dedicated gaming shoes.
Want one? The PUMA Active Gaming Footwear is available now in the UK and Australia, priced at £80. Why not anywhere else? We’re not entirely sure, but given how large the gaming market has become, we imagine they’ll be touching down on other shores soon enough.