PlayStation has announced a new partnership between the company and online chat giant Discord. The announcement comes as a bit of a surprise but is an impressively big partnership for PlayStation.
PlayStation's announcement comes after rumors circulated last month that Microsoft was in talks to acquire Discord. Those talks were reportedly ended at the tail end of the month. Regardless, it is an undeniably big grab for the PlayStation platform. While some Discord integration is present on Xbox platforms, it is limited, with players only being able to link their two accounts so that their friends on Discord can see what games they are playing.
It is unclear if PlayStation's integration of the service will go further than Xbox's, but it is difficult to imagine that it won't. The announcement came via a blog post to Sony's website from company president and CEO Jim Ryan. The post reveals that PlayStation has made a minority investment in Discord as part of a deal between the two companies to bring their experiences closer together sometime early next year. The news comes following a big week for PlayStation, as the PlayStation 5 just received its first big triple-A game launch in Returnal.
The blog post does not give many details on what PlayStation players should expect from the partnership, but it is not hard to imagine how Discord's community and chat features could be integrated into PlayStation consoles. It would be particularly interesting to see how the PlayStation's share features could integrate with Discord's to allow players to share their screenshots and video captures with their friends on Discord. A recent PlayStation patent for a like button in the PlayStation store was published, indicating that, combined with the Discord partnership, how players interact with the PlayStation platform could look very different in the near future.
Sony's partnership with Discord makes a lot of sense. Discord is a big name in the games community and boasts a staggering 140 million monthly users. PlayStation 5 getting a deeper integration of Discord will give the console a big leg up on its competition, and could it will be very interesting to see what else comes from the partnership. The stake also follows a few other moves by PlayStation to invest more into parts of the gaming community, such as PlayStation's acquisition of EVO Champion Series in March. Only the future will reveal what all comes out of the partnership, or what other partnerships PlayStation will pursue, but, for now, it is a big grab for PlayStation.
Source: PlayStation