After Discord rejected Microsoft’s USD10 billion offer, Sony and Discord have decided to team up and collaborate to integrate the popular chat app into Playstation.
While Microsoft offered to by Discord, it appears that Sony provided a better deal than Microsoft did, offering a minority stake within Discord. Though, Discord is to remain a public company already providing IPO.
Though how the collaboration would end up is not exactly specified during the announcement, but the two companies promise to “bring Discord experiences closer together on console and mobile starting early next year”.
Discord has partnered with console partners before, but their partnership with Microsoft is not as huge of an integration in contrast to Sony. According to TechCrunch, this is not just Discord going over the PS5, but rather an “alternative infrastructure for anyone on a Sony system”. Meaning Discord still has full control what features they will bring over to the next-gen console and may integrate features already available over the PC and mobile app such as “Start a Voice Chat with Discord”.
This integration is part of Sony’s roadmap for the PS5, and, as mentioned earlier, are investing into Discord as a minority investor. Currently, Discord is one of the biggest chat applications, with over 140 million active users as of December 2020.
Source: TechCrunch, TheVerge