Xbox Gamers Can Now Join Private Discord Calls

Xbox gamers can finally join private Discord calls from their consoles. The latest Xbox update released last week added a new a “Direct Voice Chats” option on the Parties & chat of the Xbox Guide that will sit right above their lists of Discord servers with public voice channels.

Since the release of the July Xbox update, Xbox gamers have been able to join public voice channels on the servers where they’re active from their consoles. However, joining private calls from their Discord DMs was not possible until now.

Microsoft has been testing this integration of “direct message voice channels” with Xbox Insiders for a couple of weeks, but the company didn’t communicate about this update when it was released last week. This is quite surprising as Microsoft was the first console maker to integrate Discord features on its consoles, and this latest update makes Discord calling feel even more “native.”

Xbox Party Chat is still there for people who prefer that, but Discord has pretty much become the communication standard for gamers. Discord also integrated on PS5 consoles now, but it doesn’t go as far as what Microsoft did with this latest update.

The latest Xbox update also adds new options to the Xbox Accessories app. Gamers can now map their Xbox Elite Series 2 and Xbox Adaptive Controller thumbsticks to button or keyboard inputs, and they can also map mouse inputs to these same controllers.