Meta And Microsoft Form Metaverse Standards Forum, To Build New Industry Standards, Apple Chooses Absent

Meta and Microsoft set the standard in the world of Metaverse. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA- Meta Platform Inc., Microsoft, and other tech giants are racing to build on the emerging metaverse concept and are forming a group to drive the development of new industry standards that will make nascent companies compatible with each other in the digital world.

Participants in the Metaverse Standards Forum include many of the largest companies working in the field. From chipmakers to game companies, as well as established standard-setting bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group said in a statement announcing their creation on Tuesday, June 21.

However, prominently missing from the member roster, for now, is Apple, which analysts expect will be the dominant player in the metaverse race after introducing mixed reality headsets this year or at least next year.

Game companies Roblox and Niantic were also not among the forum's participants. So are emerging crypto-based metaverse platforms like The Sandbox or Decentraland.

According to Bloomberg, Apple has not publicly acknowledged plans for its headset, although it has reportedly provided the board with product leaks. They also did not want to comment on the new metaverse forum.

Introducing such a device would put Apple in direct competition with Meta, which has staked its future on the growth of the metaverse and invested heavily in hardware to make its vision of an interconnected virtual world a reality.

Meta, known as Facebook until it changed its name as part of last year's metaverse pivot, has revealed plans for a mixed reality headset codenamed "Cambria" to be released this year.

Apple has been heavily involved in creating web standards like HTML5 in the past. For three-dimensional content in the metaverse, Apple is working with Pixar on the "USDZ" file format and with Adobe to ensure it supports the format.

Neil Trevett, an executive at chipmaker Nvidia who heads the Metaverse Standards Forum, said in a statement to Reuters that any company is welcome to join the group, including participants from the crypto world.

The forum aims to facilitate communication between various standards organizations and companies to achieve "real-world interoperability" in the metaverse, without discussing how Apple's absence would affect that goal.