PlayStation has made a minority investment in games-centric messaging app Discord, promising integrated features in the coming years as part of a new partnership.

In a blog post by Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan, fans could start to see the fruits of the PlayStation Discord partnership as early as early next year, though he didn’t elaborate on how the service would be integrating with PlayStation Network’s community features.

“Together, our teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with your 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”, he said.

The Highly Coveted Discord

Discord has been a highly sought-after service, especially with the boom in online communication tools following the Covid-19 pandemic. Previously, the company was being courted by Microsoft, who was likely looking to do much of the same as what Playstation plans to do with the app.

One thing that should be noted amid all the console warring among fans is that Discord is not being bought over, at least not with this announcement. A minor investment by definition means PlayStation won’t own enough of the company to make any big decisions, so describing the story as PlayStation buying Discord would be intellectually dishonest.

PlayStation hasn’t revealed how much money went into their minority investment in the company.