Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and more team up for the metaverse
by Chiara Rossi
Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and other tech companies brought the Metaverse Standards Forum to life. Apple does not participate in the consortium
The Metaverse Standards Forum is born: the consortium that brings together big tech for the development of the metaverse.
The Metaverse Standards Forum is an organization aimed at defining common development and communication protocols that make the nascent digital worlds of companies compatible with each other.
Participants in the Metaverse Standards Forum include many of the largest companies working in this space, from chip makers to gaming companies, as well as established standard-setting bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Among these stand out the American big tech such as Meta (Facebook), Microsoft and Sony. For the time being, however, Apple is missing from the list of members. The Cupertino giant is considered by analysts to be a dominant player in the race to the metaverse when it introduces a headset for mixed reality this year or in 2023.
“Industry leaders have stated that the potential of the metaverse will be best realized if built on a foundation of open standards,” the consortium said in the statement.
All the details.
WHAT IS THE METAVERSE STANDARS FORUM FOR THE METAVERSE
The forum aims to facilitate communication between a range of organizations and standards companies to achieve “real-world interoperability.”
According to the press release, membership in the Metaverse Standards Forum is free. The group plans to focus on “pragmatic, action-based projects,” such as hackathons and open source tools. The Metaverse Standards Forum is led by the Khronos Group, a non-profit consortium that deals with AR/VR, artificial intelligence, machine learning, among other things.
“Building an open and inclusive metaverse will require a constellation of open interoperability standards,” the statement added.
META, MICROSOFT, SONY AND MORE AMONG THE PARTICIPANTS
As announced earlier this week, the forum has already involved some major players, such as Meta, Microsoft, Epic Games, Adobe, NVIDiA, Sony, Unity and others.
FROM APPLE TO SNAPCHAT, THE BIG ABSENTEES
But there are also some “big absentees,” including the likes of Apple and Snapchat that are building “metaverse” products for consumers as well.
Gaming companies Roblox and Niantic were also not included among the forum participants, as were emerging cryptocurrency-based metaverse platforms such as The Sandbox or Decentraland.
“Consortia like these are only effective if enough companies adopt their standards,” comments Techcrunch.
THE POSITION OF META ON THE METAVERSE
That the commitment of all the players is necessary has been made clear by the Menlo Park group founded by Mark Zuckerberg.
“There won’t be a metaverse run by Meta, just as there is no ‘Microsoft internet’ or ‘Google internet’ today,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs, explained last month in a blog post. “Like the Internet, the metaverse will be an interconnected system that transcends national borders, so a network of public and private standards, norms and rules will be needed to enable it to function beyond jurisdictions.”