Discord and Microsoft are bringing Discord voice calls to the Xbox. The feature, available now to Xbox Insiders and coming soon to the rest of us, will allow users to connect to Discord voice chats from their Xbox, facilitating all kinds of cross-platform play shenanigans.
The process of connecting your Xbox and Discord accounts and starting up a voice chat is pretty involved. First, you have to download the Xbox mobile app, as you’ll use your phone to transfer Discord calls to an Xbox. Then, you have to connect your Xbox account to your Discord one. If you’ve connected them in the past, the instructions state that you’ll need to do so again to accept the new voice permissions.
Once that’s done, whenever you want to talk with your Discord homies on Xbox, you can start a call on Discord, hit the “transfer to Xbox” button, choose an Xbox console on the Xbox mobile app, and you’re done. You’ll also be able to initiate a transfer from Discord on desktop or the web, and a QR code will be displayed that opens the Xbox mobile app.
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Xbox users will even see a “Try Discord voice on Xbox” prompt inside the “parties and chats” section of the Xbox dashboard. This will include a QR code for the Discord and Xbox mobile apps to connect and set up the two-way link between a Discord account and an Xbox.
Discord voice chat on Xbox works by essentially transferring voice chats from Discord to an Xbox, and it’s supported on both Xbox One and Xbox Series S / X consoles. That means you can’t directly join Discord calls from an Xbox, and there’s no dedicated Discord app on the console. Instead, you always use the mobile app to sling calls across, and they integrate into an Xbox Party-like interface.
“While you are playing on your console, you will be able to see who is in the call and speaking,” explains Eric Voreis, principal program manager for Xbox player experiences and platforms. “You’ll also be able to adjust the sound, and switch between Discord Voice and Xbox game chat.”
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Microsoft and Discord will start rolling out this new integration to select Xbox Insiders today, and it will expand to more testers in the coming weeks. It’s not clear exactly when all Xbox owners will get Discord voice chat support, but Microsoft usually tests new Xbox features for a few weeks or months before rolling them out more broadly.
We’re still waiting to hear more about Sony’s promised Discord integration for PlayStation. Sony partnered up with Discord last year and also invested an unspecified amount of money into Discord as a minority investor, weeks after rumors Microsoft was trying to acquire the platform. The only Discord and PlayStation integration that has appeared so far has allowed Discord and PlayStation Network users to simply link their accounts, but many were hoping to see much deeper integration or a Discord app after Sony promised to “bring the Discord and PlayStation experiences closer together on console and mobile.”
wazup.