Xbox users are about to get the ability to talk with others via Discord chat. The feature is coming later today to Xbox Insider testers, but the full rollout to everyone else was promised to be coming soon. The timetable given in an Xbox Wire blog post was a matter of weeks for the general public to receive the update.
When the feature makes its way to Xbox, players will be able to switch between typical Xbox Live parties and Discord voice channels and group calls. From the look of things, it appears that this new chat will work almost identically to party chat, allowing you to put up an overlay to let you know who is speaking, adjust volume, mute, and more. The only difference we can see from the image provided below is that reporting will go through Discord since that is the service running the chat.
Setting up the Discord chat on your Xbox will be pretty straightforward. There will be a new option to link your Discord account to your Xbox in the Parties & chat section. Once everything is set up, you will need the Xbox app on your phone to allow you to join the Discord voice channel. A new option will be present in the Discord mobile app that will transfer the chat service through the Xbox app.
Up until this point, Discord and Xbox crossover functionality was limited to what game you were playing on Xbox showing as your status on Discord. This move to voice chat is something that PC and console players have been heavily clamoring for with the emergence of crossplay games. Relying on in-game chat to talk between platforms can be iffy, so if Discord functionality on Xbox works properly, it will be a huge step up for anyone affected by crossplay chat. PlayStation has also been slowly integrating Discord features, so when everything is fully running on both platforms, this could be a way for both console users to interact as well.
