Discord Collaboration with PlayStation was announced on 3rd May 2021. Discord is a communication service popularized by gamers and used by more than 140 million people every month around the world. The main aim of the companies behind this collaboration is to connect users’ social and gaming experience on Sony’s PlayStation Network with Discord. As part of the agreement, Sony’s video game firm has made a minority investment in Discord’s Series H round.
This will integrate the latter’s popular gaming-focused chat app with PlayStation’s own built-in social tools. It’s a quantum leap and surprising one as there was a takeover talk very recently in the air— “Sony appears to have offered a better deal than Microsoft”.
Discord allows public and private groups to gather and chat by text, audio, and video. At the start, it became popular among gamers and streamers but now it is in use by communities ranging from sports fans and music groups to cryptocurrency investors. Discord has over 140 million monthly users and its business model follows a premium subscription service.
In recent times, the company raised US$100 million in a private funding round that valued it at US$7 billion. Earlier this year many journals reported that Discord had received bids from several companies, but Wall Street Journal reported that the company ultimately halted all buyout talks because it “is performing well and prefers to stay independent at this time.”
Discord has partnered with console platforms before, though its deal with Microsoft was not a particularly deep integration. This is almost certainly more than a “friends can see what you’re playing on PS5” and more of a “this is an alternative chat infrastructure for anyone on a Sony system.” It will be a deep, system-wide but clearly Discord-branded option. So that it may include new features such as the “Start a voice chat with Discord” option when it is time to invite someone to join the game.
To bring the new vibrant experiences to life for the players, Sony Interactive Entertainment has made a minority investment as part of Discord’s Series H round. From the very first conversation with co-founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy, the Discord CEO Jim Ryan has got inspired by their lifelong love for gaming and Discord teams’ shared passion to help bring friends and communities together in new ways. Empowering players to create communities and enjoy shared gaming experiences is what this collaboration tries to put forward.
All the crazy players worldwide are excited to see the great leap and are awaiting to enjoy this new change. “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.”-stated Jim Ryan about this new great development.
However, the more details about this new collaboration and the implementation expected to come in PlayStations are still as clear as mud. One obvious implication is that if one sees a Discord app launch on PlayStation, it could also simply mean connecting Discord and PlayStation Network for more seamless communication on consoles and mobile devices. Sony states that it’ll have more to share on the matter “in the coming months.”
For all the latest updates stay tuned to https://twitter.com/discord
