Xbox Becomes First Game Console To Formally Support Discord Voice Chat

After trying, and failing, to acquire the popular chat platform Discord for $10 billion, Microsoft has opted for the next-best thing: directly integrating Discord's voice-chat capabilities into Xbox consoles. Ars Technica reports: The news arrived on Wednesday on Xbox Blog, and it clarified that for the time being, Discord access would be exclusive to the optional "Xbox Insider" tier of early, beta, and preview console OS updates. That update is already going live in waves to Xbox Insiders today, and it adds a new tooltip to the system's "chat" sidebar: "Try Discord Voice on Xbox today!"

[...] Sadly, this week's rollout of Discord on Xbox is a bit limited. The biggest issue is that there is no formal Discord app or interface on Xbox. You will need to keep a smartphone handy to initiate a "handoff" of your Discord session. Get ready for an annoying first-time setup process. Should you have an updated Xbox on the Insider OS track, its new "Try Discord Voice" prompt will initiate an account-sync process, which requires using a mobile Discord app to take a photo of a QR code displayed by your Xbox. (You'll need to re-do this if you've done so before, due to it adding a new level of credential for voice chat.) With this in place, when you are about to join a voice channel on Discord, a new "try voice chat on console" prompt will appear. Tapping through this will then, ugh, create another handover to Microsoft's dedicated Xbox app on either iOS or Android. Yes, if you want this to work, you need to install the Xbox app on your mobile device (and Discord will suggest you do so, if you haven't yet). This facilitates the key technical aspect of forwarding all Discord audio to your Xbox hardware.

With all that in place, presto: You can now talk to any participants in the Discord voice channel you chose directly on your Xbox. Its menu interface supports either muting or changing the volume level of every other user in the voice chat channel you chose, which is appreciated as a quickly accessible option during frantic gameplay. A one-button toggle in the menu allows chatters to switch between Discord voice chat and a particular game's dedicated voice-chat channel. (This is useful when you're talking to friends while in the midst of random online matchmaking, then need to turn on in-game voice chat for a second to confirm a strategy to your current teammates before going back to discussing souffle recipes with buddies.) All greater Discord control, sadly, goes back to your smartphone...

I don't get it

[bloodhawk]

Perhaps I am just getting old, but I just don't get Discords popularity, it is fucking awful interface, non intuitive and really is no better than most of the voice chat apps it replaces (actually a lot worse as many others were easier to use).

Re:

[CaptainLugnuts]

Private chat groups.

Re:

[Powercntrl]

I'd guess that the popularity of Discord is mostly due to a desire to avoid getting your console banned for "offensive" trash talk while gaming. Microsoft's own TOS is extremely draconian [xbox.com] when it comes to that sort of thing. It'd be interesting to see if they consider an on-console version of Discord to still be separate enough that you won't get the banhammer for dropping a few f-bombs.

Re: I don't get it

[Malays2 bowman]

Honestly, I don't see the problem of little Timmy getting wholesale banned because his fee fees got hurt when Mario didn't jump the way he wanted him to do, and he decided to threaten to kill another kid's family and rape that kid's mom. Recordings of these "chats" are easily found on Youtube.

  Some of these disgusting little creatures need reform school, not an Xbox.

Re:

[muh_freeze_peach]

Reform school? They just need actual parents.

Re: I don't get it

[Malays2 bowman]

Some do have good parents but we were all kids once and did stuff we weren't supposed to and knew how to sneak behind our parents' backs. I think the first and often overlooked step is to not allow "Timmy" to have the X-Box in his bedroom.

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[tlhIngan]

I'd guess that the popularity of Discord is mostly due to a desire to avoid getting your console banned for "offensive" trash talk while gaming. Microsoft's own TOS is extremely draconian when it comes to that sort of thing. It'd be interesting to see if they consider an on-console version of Discord to still be separate enough that you won't get the banhammer for dropping a few f-bombs.

Well, it probably is separate enough because with Discord, you're chatting among your friends in a private chat group.

Micr

Re:

[Linsaran]

I think it's a lot of things. Sure there's been other voice apps before. Sure there's been other text chat apps before, sure there's been forum like rich media platforms before. But I think discord is probably the first platform to integrate all of these things together relatively well, AND because you only need one singular 'discord' account you can join multiple servers without needing to create 20 different accounts for each one. Additionally it takes a lot of the relatively arcane technical aspects of

Let me explain

[twocows]

Discord has almost every feature I can think of upgrading IRC with. You have a base of an IRC-like system, but you can spin up your own server for your friends fairly easily, and the moderation controls are simple enough to make sense at a glance but with enough depth that you have the tools to manage fairly large servers with hundreds of users if necessary. Moreover, moderation controls are consistent across the platform, and if I remember right, that's not always true across all IRC networks.

You have v

Re:

[spire3661]

Discord is centralized under one company... IRC is a protocol....They are not the same thing. You cant 'spin up your own server' on Discord. Your whole 'well its easy and popular so it must be good' is old and tired.

Re:

[twocows]

From the perspective of a user, they serve the same purpose: communicating with friends and people who share an interest. You're not "spinning up a server" in the technical sense, but functionally, to the end user, it serves the same purpose: they have their own "space" that they can moderate and tailor to their needs. And I never said "it's easy and popular therefore it's good," I said "it offers good moderation controls, superior voice chat to its competition in its genesis, accessible streaming of deskto

Re:

[flink]

The reason it became popular is because it is:
* free
* Requires 0 technical knowledge to setup compared to a Ventrilo or Teamspeak server

I for one, welcome our new insect overlords

[SirAbbadon]

Oh boy! A corporate entity transcribing (and possibly recording) everything people say while gaming. What could go wrong?