Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games and several other major games and technology companies have formed the Metaverse Standards Forum, an industry group aiming to set and maintain standards for the metaverse.

The Forum is modeled on groups such as the World Wide Web Consortium, the Open AR Cloud and the Khronos Group, each of which performs a similar function for different aspects of modern technology from web design to interoperability standards for 3D graphics. All three groups are also involved in the Metaverse Standards Forum, as are the Open Geospatial Consortium and Web3D Consortium.

Members of the Forum will work together to define "interoperability standards needed to build the open metaverse," per a press release from the group.

"Open to any organization at no cost, the Forum 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."

Alongside Sony, Microsoft and Epic, Unity, Meta and Nvidia have all joined the Forum from the games space. Other members include Adobe, Autodesk, HTC, Huawei, Qualcomm and Ikea, but Apple, Roblox and Niantic, each of which has positioned itself as a major player in the metaverse space, are all notably absent.

The Forum's first meetings will take place in July.