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If you’ve got gamer friends on different platforms, you know that cross-plat party chat is usually terrible. The latest Sony-Discord partnership might just solve some of the gaming industry’s biggest communication problems!
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Sony and Discord Partner Up For Potential Magic – Android Central
I’ve talked to a handful of people about my master plan to create a product that creates an incredible party chat experience across all platforms. With Sony’s latest strategic investment in Discord, I’m likely behind the 8-ball on this idea.
It’s 2021 and we’re still dealing with muffled, inaudible comms in games where one player is on console and the other is on PC. This is unacceptable.
For the last 6 years, Discord has been working to create an incredible chat system focused on gamer needs. Most of us are familiar with the PC app which has become a central hub for chatting with your friends. It’s easy to find a server to join and voice chat works really well!
As a startup, Discord has routinely needed to raise money from investors to continue growing their user base and improve the product. Its latest round of investors includes Sony, which is shocking given the prior reports of a Microsoft<>Discord deal earlier this year.
There hasn’t been much news about what the partnership means for the future of Sony consoles, but I’m happy to speculate.
The Future of Discord
To start, I think the PS mobile app will have a direct integration with the Discord mobile app. This will let players continue their conversations seamlessly after logging off a game.
Text is a great mode of communication, but the end goal here needs to be voice. I think discord would launch an exclusive app on the PS5 to let players join voice chat to talk to their PC counterparts. After 4-6 months of testing, this would be released on the PS4.
Both of these are low-risk guesses for this partnership, and I’m mostly interested in what happens beyond the Sony ecosystem.
How does discord get on Xbox and the Switch? Does Sony edge out the other gaming platforms with a limited-time, exclusive deal? Will a copycat company come out of the woodwork to ink a partnership with Microsoft? Does Nintendo put in the work required to make a Switch party chat system for all games?
Obviously, there are plenty of things to be figured out, but this is a great step in the right direction for cross-platform friends. Discord already has a large community, which will be bolstered by the addition of folks in the Playstation network.
I’ll be on the lookout for more announcements from Sony and Discord and will keep you posted as soon as I know more!
How do you think the Discord-Sony partnership will work out? What are you most excited about with this collaboration? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section, below!
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- Polygon – FPS boost for more games on the Xbox Series X
- The Sixth Axis – Dieselpunk mechs battle it out in RTS Operation Eagle
- Kotaku – multiplayer dinosaur hunting game that isn’t Turok-related
- Rock Paper Shotgun – Genshin Impact update introduces a player housing system
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