Discord is officially shacking up with PlayStation, though to what capacity exactly we don’t know yet.
“Together, our teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with your social and gaming experiences on PlayStation Network. Our goal is to bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year, allowing friends, groups, and communities to hang out, have fun, and communicate more easily while playing games together,” reads PlayStation President and CEO Jim Ryan’s post to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s blog.
On an unrelated note, I had no idea this existed and thought all PlayStation news came through the PlayStation Blog. The more you know, folks.
Though the exact details of what the partnership will entail remains vague and under wraps, the fact that Sony Interactive Entertainment “has made a minority investment as part of Discord’s Series H round” seems to suggest that the partnership will perhaps be more than the superfluous one the communication app currently has with PlayStation’s direct competitor, Xbox.
Though Discord was in talks with Microsoft earlier this year, before shutting them down and remaining independently owned, the companies have been working together for years now, allowing users to link their Xbox and Discord accounts. This allows users on Discord to see what activity their Xbox friends are up to, but the functionality ends right about there. While it stands to reason that this will also come to PlayStation with Discord integration, there’s no telling if that’s where it will end. None of the larger functions, like chatting and servers, ever made the leap to Xbox, but could stand to do so on PlayStation, and Ryan’s language in the post points to a larger relationship than this existing one.
While we know very little now, according to Ryan, there will be “more to share in the coming months.” For now we sit and wait to see what will come of the deal, though if PlayStation got a significant communication overhaul through Discord, I certainly wouldn’t complain.