The Sony and Discord Partnership Is Now Official
Discord is one of the most popular communication services used today. Gamers, in particular, favor Discord’s simple and easy-to-use interface, over its competition. Thus, it stands to reason why, just a little over five years since its inception, Discord has grown to become so popular. In fact, Discord’s popularity has warranted it a $10-billion acquisition offer from Microsoft. But while news of the acquisition talks quickly went viral, what most people missed out on is how the situation came to a close after Discord ended all acquisition talks. What’s probably even more surprising though is how the Sony and Discord partnership came to be. Sony CEO and President Jim Ryan made the surprising announcement on the official SIE blog. Discord and Sony will work together to bring “the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile.” Ryan also adds that the feature will most likely be available starting in early 2022. If nothing else, the Sony and Discord partnership could mean that communicating with friends and other players online should become easier and more convenient. However, it will be interesting to see if the Sony and Discord partnership will include one particular Discord feature. At the moment, Discord allows users to start Spotify listening parties with friends. It’s worth noting that Spotify itself recently struck a deal with Microsoft. Going forward, an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription now comes with 4 months of Spotify Premium. In addition to the partnership, Ryan also announced that Sony will invest an undisclosed amount in Discord. This means that Sony is now officially a minority investor in Discord, after taking part in the company’s Series H investment round. With that said, this isn’t the first time that Discord has partnered with a console platform. However, its previous partnership with Microsoft was not as intensive. In comparison, Sony’s partnership with Discord will likely include deep integrations. We can expect Sony to integrate features that include more than just the ability to see your friends playing on their PlayStation 5. Rather, we’ll likely see the addition of an alternative chat infrastructure on PlayStation consoles.
