Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and other tech giants that joined the trend of creating virtual worlds have formed a group of metaverse creators, and left Apple out.
The group is called the Metaverse Standards Forum, and its purpose is to catalyse the development of industry standards to spur growth and make the companies’ digital worlds interoperable—that is, able to seamlessly interact with one another.
The announcement about the group came hours after Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, showcased prototype virtual reality (VR) headsets.
Although it has not been formally announced, Apple reportedly has a planned release for an augmented and virtual reality device. Upon its release, Apple would be in direct competition with Meta.
However, Apple is not the only big tech company excluded from the big tech metaverse clique. Popular emerging crypto-based metaverse platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland were also not mentioned. Neither was Roblox, the big gaming platform where South Africa just launched a virtual world.
Apple’s absence is notable because not only has it been a source of exciting augmented and virtual reality discussions, it has also had significant experience creating standards. The company was a key player in the creation of the web standard for HTML5. It also worked with Pixar and Adobe to create Universal Scene Description (USDZ), a file format for virtual reality files.
The group doesn’t seem to be snobbish as it stated during the announcement that any interested company is welcome to join. It is unlikely that Apple will take a bite at the open invitation because despite showing interest in augmented and artificial reality, Apple has never used the term “metaverse” to label or define any of its virtual reality work or plans.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so shocked that it is not part of a group named Metaverse Standards Forum.
