Microsoft joins Meta for upcoming Metaverse as the tech giants racing to build the emerging metaverse concept and have formed a group to promote the development of industry norms that would make the companies’ growing digital worlds compatible with each other.
Microsoft joins Meta for upcoming Metaverse and the organization is called Metaverse Standards Forum, and its founding members include Meta, Microsoft, Huawei, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epic Games, Unity, and Adobe.
One company that’s conspicuously missing from the list is Apple. Multiple reports have come out these past few years that Apple is releasing its virtual or augmented reality headset, and it’s expected to become a major player in the metaverse when the device becomes available.
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 interconnected virtual worlds a reality.
However, critics expect Apple to become a dominant player in the metaverse race once it introduces a mixed reality headset this year or next. Gaming companies Roblox and Niantic also were not included among the forum’s participants, nor were the materializing crypto-based metaverse platforms like The Sandbox or Decentraland.
Regardless, another big trademark that’s missing from the list is Google, which is also reportedly working on an AR headset codenamed “Project Iris”. That said, membership is free and open to any organization, so more companies could join later on.
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As with any standard, one for the metaverse would only be considered a success if companies, especially the biggest participants in the industry, embrace them.
“Multiple industry leaders have stated that the potential of the metaverse will be best realized if it is built on a foundation of open standards,” the forum noted in its press release.
Meta, known as Facebook until it changed its name as part of its metaverse pintle last year, has discontinued plans for a mixed-reality headset code-named “Cambria” to be released this year.
Apple has been heavily involved in creating web standards such as HTML5 in the past. For three-dimensional content in the metaverse, Apple worked with Pixar on the “USDZ” file format and with Adobe to ensure it supported the format.
Neil Trevett, an executive at the chip maker, NVIDIA, who is also chairing the Metaverse Standards Forum, said in a statement that any company is welcome to join the group, including participants from the crypto world.
The forum aims to facilitate communication between a variety of standards organizations and companies to bring about “real-world interoperability” in the metaverse, he said, without addressing how Apple’s absence would affect that goal.
