The building that used to house the mythical Central bookstore (Postigo de San Martín, 8) now houses a temple for video gamers. It is OXO, an innovative museum that arrived in Spain for the first time in mid-2023 in Malaga. After twelve months of success, it has decided to expand and open a new headquarters to spread the history and legacy of video games in the capital.
OXO Madrid will open its doors to the first visitors in November. Although the exact day of the opening is not known, the museum has announced through its website that there will be an online pre-sale of tickets on Thursday, October 7.
With its strategic location – a 19th century mansion a few meters from Callao – and its activities, OXO aims to become a meeting point for a large community of gamers nationwide and encourage the creation of new technological projects.
The gamers’ paradise will have a fixed collection that shows the evolution of digital games in seventy years; temporary exhibitions; educational workshops; meetings with developers and professionals related to the video game industry and even a gift store. To differentiate itself from the Andalusian venue, it will include immersive experiences in its program that we will see announced very soon.
The founders of OXO are the Ramos brothers, responsible for Kaiju Group: a Malaga-based company specializing in video game development, training and events. Many of their initiatives are developed through Gamer Camp and the Escuela Superior de Videojuegos y Arte Digital (EVAD). One of Kaiju’s most famous projects is FreakCon: a meeting that celebrates geek culture and geek pride with exhibitions, concerts and cosplay contests.
What happened to La Central?
While the organizers of OXO are preparing for the opening, La Central is adapting to its new location, which is right in front of the museum. The bookstore had to leave the Elizabethan palace where it had been for a decade due to pressures from the real estate sector. In a statement, the owners of the iconic bookstore said that “foreclosures, lawsuits, auctions and ambitions of new owners” can make a project like theirs “unfeasible”. Therefore, “they had no choice” but to move.