Sony Interactive Entertainment has acquired a minority stake in Discord as part of their latest Series H funding round, this comes after talks with Microsoft for a complete acquisition failed. Sony hopes to integrate Discord with the PlayStation Network ecosystem on consoles and mobile starting early next year to allow for a more seamless experience. This recent news helps explain Sony's decision to retire the PS4 communities feature which boasted tens of thousands of active users. The complete press release from Sony Interactive Entertainment can be found below.

Jim RyanAt PlayStation, we're constantly looking for new ways to enable players around the world to connect with one another, form new friendships and communities, and share fun experiences and lasting memories. It's in this spirit that we're excited to announce a new partnership with Discord, the communication service popularized by gamers and used by more than 140 million people every month around the world.

Together, our teams are already hard at work connecting Discord with your social and gaming experience on PlayStation Network. 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.

To bring these experiences to life for our players, Sony Interactive Entertainment has made a minority investment as part of Discord's Series H round. 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. 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.

It's always a privilege to work with great partners to bring fresh experiences to our fans, and we'll have more to share in the coming months. Stay tuned to our channels and @Discord for all the latest updates.