Discord is Interested in Supporting Nintendo Switch, But Don't Hold Your Breath

I just don't see this happening Nintendo are really focusing on there own app and adding a competitor that most people would like more wouldn't really work out for what they have planed for the switch.

I'm fine with Nintendo doing it's own thing as long as it becomes a dedicated console app in the future. The whole concept of adding your phone to the mix, is ridiculous and not something I would even consider using.

This cord has been discontinued

I love Discord so much. As a server owner with over 1000 people, I'd love to see Discord come on even more platforms.

That said it's really unlikely for reasons listed in this article, so it would just be a pipedream at this point. If Nintendo takes the best out of Discord and Teamspeak and combines them into one app that'll be amazing.

another device just to do something the switch could easily support by itself is an outrageous & cumbersome solution. nintendo should be ashamed of pitching this to their audience in 2017, voice chat has been a standard feature in consoles for over a decade.

What people are forgetting is that, powerful as it looks, the Switch can only do so much, voice chat included. Let’s remember that the Switch could connect, as far as I’m aware, to a maximum of 8 Joy-Con controllers. If you'll add another one to the mix, like say, a headset (either wired or bluetooth), I don't think the Switch could handle that anymore (when factoring-in voice chat specifically). What's more is that Bluetooth and WiFi both consumes CPU. Not to mention doing all that while playing a multiplayer online game. That’s just too much for a mobile device like Switch to handle. Even modern phones can't connect to that many. Cumbersome as it may seem, connecting via an App though could reduce overhead to the system, which your phone will be the one to process the VoIP protocols. Let’s think before criticizing Nintendo for this. Who knows maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. We almost all use some kind of chat software anyways especially if we’re doing some PC gaming. I either use Skype, Hangouts, or Discord when playing Monster Hunter on the 3DS with my friends and It isn’t really a bother. What I’m really concerned about it the ridiculous setup of Hori’s Splatoon headset. Good thing Reggie said it’s not the only way to do voice chat with the Switch.

Oh, speaking about DeNA, where is DeNA games for Switch ?

@Zyph I've been pointing that out to people when it's raised as well. Nintendo are probably mindful that any wifi transmissions on top of encoding / decoding voice etc would be a significant drain on a carefully balanced CPU.

It's easy for us to say "just put it on the hardware", but we don't appreciate the ins-and-outs of how the chipset works.

That said, if there had been some way to avoid the Squid adapter that we've seen already then that would have been worth some serious consideration.

Even if Discord couldn't bring a Switch app to the fore - it would be good if it can talk to the Nintendo services and see what games you're playing etc.

But again, this might be stepping on Nintendo's toes.

can't believe people are trying to make a technical argument for lack of voice chat, talk about apologist. the amount of overhead in the OS would be absolutely minimal. it will take more resources in order to stream the audio from this external device than it would to have it on there in the first place. 'elegant' solution indeed.

Well, it appears that Switch can't run two apps simultaneously... So...

@HaNks That’s just how I see it. I try to figure things out rationally as to what could be the reason behind Nintendo’s approach and not just blabber into a useless and tiring argument. To each their own. Let’s hear your non-technical argument as to why the decision was made in the first place.

The problem to me is that people do ultimately think of the Switch as more of a tablet or a smart device, even though it's a gaming console. That's why people keep asking about browser, Netflix, etc. Having to connect an eternal smart device with proprietary apps just seems strange these days. I don't really care about voice chat, but a lot of people do. Nintendo has been behind the competition on this stuff for a long time, and I feel like we're starting to see the growing pains of this.

@Zyph in reality i think it's to do with Nintendo's child friendly stance (at the cost of the 'core' console user base) and the worry they have about children communicating with pedophiles or people saying inappropriate things to them.

something that in theory should be remedied with parental controls, which they already have, but clearly there is some kind of deeper paranoia there. either way it's a very backward approach to something that's been standard since the xbox 360.

A Discord app for NS would be a huge boon. It would be way better than anything Nintendo would come up with themselves. Would Nintendo allow it, though? Eh.... Their previous efforts didn't yield much in the long term. Wii Speak was the closest they came, and that only really functioned with Monster Hunter Tri and Conduit 2, albeit with the dreaded friend codes.

As anyone who is used to Discord knows, audio straight from the primary hardware itself, be it console or PC, is superior to smartphone and tablet use. Those phone circuit boards just aren't made with quality audio tech. It doesn't seem that Nintendo has the wisdom to make that decision... But we'll see. Also, wired beats wireless quality any day.

@Zyph 3.5mm breakout cables like the Hori headset provides aren't as cumbersome as they look. It just looks like a lot because the diagram exaggerates the size of the components. I use a similar setup when I stream Switch gameplay, where I use a splitter in the headphone port to divide the audio into my headphones and the analog audio input in my Elgato HD60, because my television doesn't have its own audio out. It means I need to sit close to my equipment, which works for me since it's all on my computer desk anyway. As for how practical it'll be to have a mobile device offload voice communication, my only concerns are that it now depends on the reliability of a second device. If you get a phone call or the phone or app crashes, your team is suddenly one player short and nobody on the team will know why or necessarily notice until it's too late. Apparently to Nintendo those risks are worth relieving the Switch CPU of those tasks, so it'll just have to be seen how widespread these theoretical problems manifest in practice.

Nintendo's plan sounds poopy. For instance I don't have a smart phone so I guess I'm out.

Just let them have their app on the switch. Nintendo should just allow apps like this annd video/movie apps like netflix ,wwe network and others to have their apps work on it.

Ps
What the name of that anime service cruchy something?

I doubt we will see it on the Switch.

@HaNks Fair enough
@Exy Yeah I kinda had a similar setup with my PS3 which the audio is divided between my stereo speakers via a splitter and I made it so that when I plug in my headphones the audio is redirected to that.
We'll just have to wait and see. You're right about the app though but the upside is that hopefully updates will be more frequent as opposed to waiting for a full firmware update for the Switch.

@Zyph I just hope they won't do anything daft like use SafetyNet for the Android version. I have a custom ROM and plenty of reason to insist on using it over stock.

It would be so much easier if Nintendo would just integrate Discord into their system or at least allow apps.
Or juat release the damn browser, that would be suffoce to use Discord.

That would single handedly save the switch's online platform to have a strong chat app like discord on the switch.

Nintendo should actually try to intergrate discord rather than make it's own s****y phone chat app.

@Zyph I understand that, however as a consumer im still a little frustrated that this has translated to being my problem. Apps like this should be supplementary, not providing core services. Let the users deal with that problem. If you have eight joycons going, you're probably doing a local party and maybe have to be careful about online services. In fact, they already implement this on a case by case basis. Mario Kart supports 4 player local, or 2 player + online. It just seems that the demand for a built in party chat system, as seen in <insert name of just about every competitor's platform> outweighs cases of people linking two Switches together to get 8 player local Mario Kart going. And, with other consoles, if I've participated in LAN parties with a larger group, we understood that we were going to be largely offline for the session.

@Zyph You have to keep in mind, the Original Xbox and PS vita could both do voice chat. It's not a matter of power, but of optimization. Nintendo could do it extremely well, but I have a feeling many problems would happen with Discord, leading Nintendo to turn them down

@Anti-Matter I believe that DeNA is strictly mobile device only, mainly to help Nintendo produce mobile games like Super Mario Run, Miitomo, and Fire Emblem Heroes.

Why should it matter... so what if people can voice chat for free. They'd still have to have Nintendo's Online service to play online together.

Fun fact: a homebrew Discord client was released for 3DS today

Through your phone or through another program, as long as it isn't a part of the game.

If Discord was to come to the system, to be useable within Switch games, it would have to be made a part of the OS itself. It would have to be running in the background in permanence while games keep running in the foreground. If the OS wasn't built from the get-go to do things like that, then you're not going to see that happening, ever.

It is my understanding however that, of the 4 CPU cores inside the Switch, one is in permanence running the OS functions and inaccessible to games, and wasn't it said too that 1GB of the system's RAM was reserved for the OS as well? I don't see the system doing much in the background as things stand now so maybe it's not altogether impossible to make it run if they REALLy wanted to try it out, but like I said unless the OS was built to allow easily for more functions to be added on top that would keep running in the background (therefore not affecting game performance at all since the resources used would already have been reserved for OS purposes in advance anyway)... The OS is pretty barebones as it is, whether that was made on purpose to be able to add more things on top afterwards or not is just unknown.

But don't ask for an APP. Because the system can only run one "APP" at a time, so unless you want to use your Switch to chat through discord with other people while you play on your PC or another system altogether, then a Discord app isn't going to be much use to you, is it? Ask for it to be made part of the OS instead... But I don't see that happening, considering Nintendo's plans in that area seem to be a lot different.

The only way I see this working is if you have the lobby open on your phone and you connect your headphones directly to the switch (wired or not). It might help if someone is being a troll and you can look right at your phone and mute/disconnect them from the lobby or game

If they made it work, that'd be great but just like how skype was never a thing on nintendo consoles I doubt we'd see discord for the switch.

Discord is also more dynamic with its options, bots, servers, etc which would require a massive remake of the app for the switch exclusively (rather than letting you just sign it on the same account you use with your PC or phone.) It'd be great if we got it, but I doubt we'd get "discord" and more like "diet discord" in which case we're better off with something more fleshed out like microsoft's communication system.

@Arnold-Kage
Why don't you Google "crunchy anime"?
It's literally the first result.

I would like to have discord on the Switch because then I could talk to all of my friends without having to move over to my phone or computer. I feel very estranged from them all as it is when I'm playing on the switch due to the lack of a social platform.

@Link506 That's fair. But I guess at the end of the day they chose the perks of having a separate app for it.

Much ado about nothing when it comes to the Nintendo app. And by that, I mean I don't know a single person that has actually tried it yet, and there's loads of time to make tweaks before it turns into a paid service next year.

And am I the only person who actually likes that squid adaptor headset?

Found a solution that will hopefully spread like wildfire.
Create a discord account with no more than 5 letter username.
Once created it will look similar to mine Lorde#8278.
Now update your Nintendo Nickname to match this format.
You can then easily add anyone to Discord where the Nintendo nickname matches this format.
This should at least make things easier for communicating until Nintendo comes up with a real solution.
Spread the word

I think this should happen!!!!

If the games are going to cross platform then discord is essential! End off