Big Tech Joins Hands to ‘Foster’ the Creation of Metaverse Standards

Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Sony, as well as 33 other tech giants racing to build the metaverse have formed a group to create the infrastructure for an interoperable metaverse.

Dubbed The Metaverse Standards Forum, the new initiative aims to introduce interoperability and cross-compatibility in the space in order to foster the development of “the open metaverse.”

Per the website, the Forum is “open to any organization at no cost.” Furthermore, it states that,

“The Forum will not create standards itself but will coordinate requirements and resources to foster the creation and evolution of standards within standards organizations working in relevant domains.”

According to a press release, the forum, hosted by The Khronos Group, will focus on “pragmatic, action-based projects such as implementation prototyping, hackathons, plugfests, and open-source tooling to accelerate the testing and adoption of metaverse standards, while also developing consistent terminology and deployment guidelines.”

Participants include 37 tech giants who have been actively involved in the space and encompass a wide range of different companies, from chip makers and gaming companies to established standards-setting bodies like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The need for such organization arises since the metaverse is a completely new concept with vast potential, and can mean different things to different people, the announcement said. Therefore, the Metaverse Standards Forum has been organized to coordinate plans and reduce “duplication of effort across the industry.”

“The Metaverse Standards Forum is a unique venue for coordination between standards organizations and industry, with a mission to foster the pragmatic and timely standardization that will be essential to an open and inclusive metaverse,” said Khronos president, Neil Trevett.

Notably, some prominent players in the metaverse industry are missing from the member list. For one, Apple, which is looking seriously into the metaverse and may become a dominant player in the space once it introduces a mixed reality headset, is absent.

Gaming companies Roblox, which is creating its own metaverse, and Niantic, the company behind the hit augmented reality (AR) game Pokemon Go, are also not included among the forum’s participants. Other emerging crypto-based metaverse platforms like The Sandbox or Decentraland are absent as well.

A few more companies named among the participants are Alibaba, Huawei, Adobe, Unity, and IKEA.

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