As part of the Sponsored Quests program, Discord users will be prompted to play and stream specific games on Discord, and in the process earn in-game rewards. The program was initially tested out last year during a Star Wars-themed event on May 4 in Fortnite.

Discord’s senior vice president of product Peter Sellis has stated that players will have the option to disable personalised promotions by opting out through Discord’s settings. However, these promotions will still be visible through specific windows in the Discord app.

“Users may still see Quests, however, if they navigate to their Gift Inventory and/or through contextual entry points like a user’s friends’ activity,” says Discord’s senior product communications manager Swaleha Carlson. “They’ll also have the option to hide an in-app promotion for a specific Quest or game they’re not interested in.”

The new program, essentially a more engagement-focused advertising campaign, goes starkly against Discord’s own historic aversion to advertising. Former Instagram executive Meghana Dhar told WSJ that Discord could potentially start alienating its users with this new ad-focused program.

The platform “has famously promoted itself as committed to being ad-free, so this step-change could impact user trust and potentially have them looking for alternative platforms,” said Dhar.

The feature is available has started rolling out to the Alpha Skip-Ahead and Alpha rings of the Xbox Insider program, and according to the announcement, will be coming soon to everyone else.

As part of the feature, Discord on Xbox consoles will now also allow players to directly connect to Discord channels without needing to use the app on other platforms, and will be available through the Parties & chats menu in the console’s UI.

Discord has been making its way on to consoles over the last couple of years, and made its way on to the PS5 earlier this year. With Xbox integration for streaming, we’re likely to also see the feature make its way on to the PS5 down the line.

To join Discord Voice Chat, players need to link their Discord and PSN accounts on PS5. You can use the app on a mobile device or computer to start voice chat on the console. Other social features include starting or requesting a Share Screen from a friend’s profile, a “Join Game” icon in party chat, and a “Friends Who Play” tile in the game hubs.

It’s also possible to upload game captures and screenshots manually to the PlayStation App via your consoles, which also works with the existing auto-upload. As for Variable Refresh Rate at 1440p, you’ll need an HDMI 2.1 display with VRR support and a compatible game.

New ease-of-use features include PS4 to PS5 save data migration, PS5 to PS5 data transfer, improvements to the screen reader, an update for the DualSense Wireless Controller, game capture using voice commands (restricted to US and UK players), and more.

Sony has yet to confirm rumors of Cronus, a feature that allows for cloud streaming PS5 games with PlayStation Plus Premium. It’s reportedly included in update 7.00, which releases on March 8th, so stay tuned for more updates.

Sources speaking to Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson revealed that the feature has been in development and testing for months as “Cronus.” It’s reportedly coming to PlayStation Plus Premium, which costs $17.99. Furthermore, a public beta for update 7.00 is allegedly beginning in the “coming days” and will conclude on January 30th, but test testers reportedly won’t have full access to Discord integration.

Sony hasn’t officially commented on PS5 game streaming via the cloud. At present, PlayStation Plus Premium only offers cloud streaming for PlayStation One, PS2, PS3, and PlayStation Portable games (that too with restrictions in certain countries). Nevertheless, with Xbox pushing for cloud streaming of Xbox Series X/S titles across various platforms through Game Pass, it makes sense for Sony to pursue the same.

Stay tuned for more details in the coming days.

While no official announcements have been made regarding bringing Discord to PS5 for more than just activity sharing, dataminer Advaith has spotted signs that Discord’s voice chat capabilities will be coming to Sony’s platform sooner rather than later.

Rumours surrounding Discord coming to PS5 aren’t particularly new, but a notable report by prominent insider Tom Henderson said that the integration would arrive “in the coming months” back in August.

Discord has become one of the most popular way for PC gamers to connect over voice chat, especially for the purposes of gaming. The service allows users to host a variety of “servers”, allowing them to have separate groups for their communities.

If Discord integration with PS5 is anything like the Xbox implementation, it will likely be quite clunky, requiring a smartphone to be used alongside the console itself for finer control over Discord’s settings.

Discord PS5 voice integration pic.twitter.com/Qsq2JqUDDH

— advaith (@advaithj1) October 23, 2022

A recent report by prominent insider Tom Henderson claimed that PS5 would be getting Discord integration “in the coming months”, and that it would be going live along with a version 7.0 update, with a 6.0 update planned before that for sometime in September.

Now, Henderson has followed up on that and provided a clearer timeline for when to expect these updates. Taking to Twitter, he recently shared that PS5’s version 6.0 update is planned for September 7, while version 7.0 is set for March 8 next year. According to Henderson, that means the PS5 will be getting Discord integration come March 2023 “if nothing else changes”.

Of course, things can always change, so there’s every chance that one (or even both) of the updates end up changing their launch dates. Either way, it seems like Discord might finally soon be coming to PS5 either way.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, it was announced that Xbox consoles will also be getting Discord voice chat support. Read more on that through here.

https://twitter.com/_Tom_Henderson_/status/1564167448068227072

Earlier this year, it was confirmed that the integration of Discord on PS5 would be beginning and going at a gradual rate, and now, a new report by prominent insider Tom Henderson on Exputer claims that full Discord integration on PlayStation consoles is coming soon enough.

Henderson claims that as per “several sources” – including those that leaked the PS5 Pro controller, which was recently officially unveiled as the DualSense Edge – Discord integration on PlayStation consoles has been in quality assurance for “a couple of months” and has apparently been going “very well”.

Allegedly, Discord will be integrated when version 7.0 is pushed for the PS5. A version 6.0 is also planned before that for sometime in September.

Earlier this year, it was announced that Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One are also getting support for Discord voice chat.

The Discord integration with Xbox consoles will be in-depth, allowing users to see who is in the call, who is speaking, and will even allow players to adjust volume levels between Discord Voice and Xbox game chat.

With the new update, Xbox Insider members will see a Try Discord Voice on Xbox option in their Parties & Chats screen. Picking the option will then take the players to the appropriate apps to connect their Discord accounts with their Xbox accounts. It is worth noting that those who have already linked their Discord account with their Xbox account will need to re-link them to be able to use Discord Voice on their console.

The update, currently only available to select Xbox Insiders at the moment, will be released to more Xbox Insiders in the coming weeks. There is no release date for the full release of the new feature.

Now, Sony and Discord have confirmed that Discord will gradually start to roll out to PlayStation users across the US and then other countries soon. As announced in a recent Discord blog update, players will now be able to link their PlayStation Network accounts to Discord, which will in turn show their friends what games they are currently playing on either their PS4 or their PS5. There are multiple privacy settings as well, with players being able to control who (friends or anyone) can see their activity status for PSN.

However, there’s still no word or confirmation on what further features this integration will entail, and what the roadmap for its rollout is going to look like.

PlayStation also recently announced the acquisition of Bungie in a $3.6 billion deal- read more on that through here.

As spotted by members of the Discord subreddit and corroborated through a datamine by an MP1st report, users have discovered the PlayStation Network icon for Discord integration alongside others such as Twitch, Steam etc., which should allow players to connect their PSN accounts to the service. Once that’s done, friends should be able to see which games you’re playing right now on your PlayStation console, or even invite players directly to games through the service.

While this doesn’t allow PlayStation players to use the application on the console itself, the very presence of the option does certainly hint towards some work being done on this side of things. Fans can expect to hear more news on the matter sometime soon, so stay tuned until then.