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Sony has made a minority investment into social network Discord, with full integration coming to PlayStation next year. The announcement – which perhaps explains the closure of Communities on PlayStation 4 – was made by bigwig Jim Ryan on the SIE Blog, with the executive explaining that “our teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with your social and gaming experience on PlayStation Network”.

He continued: “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.”

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The result could be transformative for PlayStation’s social features, as players will presumably be able to create channels to chat with friends, join official developer communities, and much more. Perhaps we’ll finally get around to creating that Push Square Discord a lot of you have been asking for, eh?

“From our very first conversation with co-founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy, I was inspired by their lifelong love for gaming and our teams’ shared passion to help bring friends and communities together in new ways,” Ryan continued. “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.”

The news is particularly surprising as, up until recently, Microsoft was reportedly in talks to acquire Discord for around $10 billion. That buyout never materialised, and it looks like Sony has swooped in and partnered with the organisation for deeper integration with its consoles – although, obviously, this doesn’t exclude the social network from coming to other formats in the future.

[source sie.com]