Sony will bring the popular messaging platform Discord to its PlayStation consoles in early 2022. The integration of the gaming-focused chat app with PlayStation Network (PSN), an online gaming service for the PlayStation consoles, is a big move by the Japanese giant and it has surprised many in the gaming community. Sony Interactive Entertainment official blog post by CEO and president Jim Ryan revealed the information of this collaboration. The blogpost reads:
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.
To bring these experiences to life for our players, Sony Interactive Entertainment has made a minority investment as part of Discord’s Series H round. From our very first conversation with co-founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy, I was inspired by their lifelong love for gaming and our teams’ shared passion to help bring friends and communities together in new ways. Empowering players to create communities and enjoy shared gaming experiences is at the heart of what we do, so we are beyond excited to start this journey with one of the world’s most popular communication services.
It is still not clear how this integration will look like. The information however indicates that there will be some kind of Discord chat interface that’ll enable interaction with the peers on PSN either through voice or text.
On top of that, Sony Interactive Entertainment made a minority investment in Discord as part of its Series H round. The service, which was popularised by gamers, has over 140 million users. It was almost acquired by Microsoft earlier this year for at least $10 billion, but talks appeared to have died down for now.