Sony Interactive Entertainment has made a minority investment in Discord, a popular gaming-focused chat app. Sony will integrate the gaming-focused chat app with PlayStation’s own built-in social tools.
“At PlayStation, we’re constantly looking for new ways to enable players around the world to connect with one another, form new friendships and communities, and share fun experiences and lasting memories,” Jim Ryan, President & CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment said.
“It’s in this spirit that we’re excited to announce a new partnership with Discord, the communication service popularized by gamers and used by more than 140 million people every month around the world.”
Sony and Discord teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with social and gaming experience on PlayStation Network.
“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,” said Ryan.
“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.”
Discord is a voice, video and text communication service used by over a hundred million people to hang out and talk with their friends and communities.
It was started to solve a big problem: how to communicate with friends around the world while playing games online. Since childhood, founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy both shared a love of video games, cherishing the friendships and connections that formed while playing them.
At the time, all the tools built for this job were slow, unreliable, and complex. Jason and Stan knew they could make a better service that encouraged talking, helped form memories, and recreated the feeling of togetherness all found through gaming.
So, in 2015, Stan and Jason started to bring Discord to life. People from all over the world loved it.
Discord made it easy to genuinely communicate with friends, going beyond casual talking. Friends were staying in touch with their various communities. Discord was making it easy to participate in conversation, hopping around text, voice and video to talk.
The technology was complex but the goal was simple: make Discord an inviting and comfortable home to jump into with your communities and friends. Within a few years, Discord began to take off, and devoted people who loved our product sprung up around the world.
