PlayStation announces partnership with Discord, integration to start "early next year"

PlayStation has announced a new partnership with Discord that will begin integrating the popular chat app with PlayStation Network in early 2022.

The deal sees Sony now with a minority stake in Discord that will allow some form of integration between the communications service and PlayStation consoles. Curiously, this comes just under two weeks after Microsoft's bid to buy Discord for $10 billion fell through. 

Earlier this year, VentureBeat and Bloomberg reported that Discord had received bids from several companies, but, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the company ultimately halted all buyout talks on the grounds that it "is performing well and prefers to stay independent at this time."

"Together, our teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with your social and gaming experience on PlayStation Network," reads the announcement from Sony. "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."

The details on PlayStation's deal with Discord are still relatively vague, and they don't clearly spell out what exactly this means for gamers, the PS4 and PS5, and the Discord app itself. One obvious implication is that we might see a Discord app launch on PlayStation, but the deal could also simply mean connecting Discord and PlayStation Network for more seamless communication on consoles and mobile devices. Sony says it'll have more to share on the matter "in the coming months."

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