Sony today announced it’s partnering up with Discord to bring the chat platform’s features to the PlayStation Network. According to Sony, the two teams are already working on connecting the two services. We don’t yet know what that means for the future of the PSN’s social features, but the integration between the two services is said to happen sometime early next year.
We’re not yet sure exactly how Discord and the PlayStation Network are going to come together. It could be there will be an app or integrated chat of some kind, or maybe friends list integration on Discord itself. All PlayStation boss Jim Ryan would say is: “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.”
Sony made a minority investment in Discord in order to make the partnership happen. Ryan added that the two services are all about bringing gamers and communities together, so it seemed natural to partner up: “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.”
This is a huge departure from the previous rumors that Microsoft had been in talks to buy out Discord for $10 billion. That deal was rejected by Discord, as it wanted to maintain its independence. Presumably, this was so it could have the freedom to partner with Sony, which it obviously couldn’t have done if it’d been bought out by Microsoft. Still, $10 billion is a lot of money to turn down, assuming the reports were accurate. Sony didn’t say how much its “minority” investment in Discord was.
Source: SIE Blog
