Discord integration is finally rolling out to PS5 and PS4 players, starting in the US and gradually coming to other countries over the next few weeks. This follows Sony's May 2021 announcement that PlayStation will be partnering with Discord, and it looks like that partnership is finally bearing fruit.
As reported by Eurogamer, the PlayStation and Discord partnership was – until now – something of a mystery in terms of what form the integration would take on Sony's hardware. Now, though, an official Discord blog has spilled the beans – and the integration is a touch underwhelming.
"Starting today," the post details, "we're gradually rolling out the ability to link your PSN account from Discord and display your PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 game activity in your user profile!"
Essentially, the integration means that your Discord friends will be able to see which game you're currently playing on PS5 or PS4, but it's not the first time such a feature has been made available on the popular chat app.
Support for PlayStation hardware comes well after the ability to link your Discord account to both Xbox Series X/S and Steam, as well as to huge streaming apps like Twitch and Spotify.
In addition to displaying their current game activity, users can also choose to display their PlayStation Network ID on their Discord account. This is arguably the more useful feature, as it lets your Discord pals easily add you to their PlayStation friends list – great for an impromptu session of Apex Legends or Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel.
PS5's Discord integration is a little underwhelming
Back when PlayStation announced its partnership with Discord in 2021, we wondered just how robust a feature set both parties could bring to PS5 and PS4. For example, having your Discord servers' voice-chat rooms accessible on console would have been a fantastic feature, especially considering the app's call quality has most of its competition beat.
Perhaps integration with PlayStation's Trophies could also have been implemented, with, for example, the option to auto-share screenshots to selected Discord servers whenever you've earned a particularly elusive Trophy; although perhaps such a system would be too open to abuse, especially as it could allow naughtier users to spam messages to servers where sharing such content would be unwarranted.
What we've ended up with on PS5 and PS4, then, is very similar – if not identical – to Discord's offerings on Xbox Series X/S and Steam. While being able to display your game status and online IDs on Discord is a nice feature, we hope all parties involved are open to expanding their feature sets, especially as Discord seems pretty immovable in the online chat space at present.
