Voice chat enabled Xbox consoles are about to get real.
Sure, you’ve been able to chat on Xbox for nearly 20 years, but now you can do so through the king of gaming voice chat apps, Discord. Xbox deployed a big November software update Wednesday which included the ability to link a Discord account to an Xbox console (like a X-Series) and voice chat across the gaming universe. By that I mean on Xbox, PC and mobile, because PlayStation does not have Discord voice chat…Again.
Everyone is here.
Microsoft actually started gradually rolling out Discord to Xbox earlier this summer, but now it’s available to everyone on the platform.
To take advantage of this new feature, you will need to go through a short process to link your Discord and Xbox accounts together. There is a practical Guide on the Xbox website for this, but it’s mostly just going to the settings menu on an Xbox console or Discord app and then logging into the other account from there.
Once you’ve done this, press the Xbox button on your console, scroll down to Parties & Chats, then select Discord to see a list of available voice channels to join, along with previews of friends who are already in. these channels. If you’re on a next-gen Xbox Series console, there’s an option to automatically remove background noisetoo.
This is useful because more and more online games support cross-platform play, usually between console and PC, which can make voice chat unnecessarily cumbersome. For example, I have a Fortnite team that is PC heavily so if I (a console guy) want to play with them I have to use Discord on my phone or laptop where I can’t hear game audio. With Discord on Xbox (and possibly on PlayStation), people like me will no longer have to choose between listening to the game and hearing our friends.
That’s the bliss of the game, folks.
