San Francisco, California - Big software and hardware companies are pulling together to make sure the metaverse, whenever someone finally pieces it together, has standards.

Major tech companies announced in an official statement on Tuesday that they are banding together to hammer out standards for the multiverse – the virtual playground.

Most of the big players have signed on for the newly created Metaverse Standards Forum, including Meta, Microsoft, Huawei, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Epic Games, Unity, and Adobe.

But even though electronics giants, gaming publishers, and Facebook's parent company are in, a few conspicuous companies are out.

Apple and Google haven't joined in, which may make sense, since they have both piloted Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) projects. It seems likely they wouldn't want to adhere to a blanket set of standards across the industry – at least during development.

And it's not as though Apple likes to play with the other kids when it comes to standards (we're looking at you, proprietary chargers that are only compatible with Apple products).

The company also mostly likely won't be down for another set of roadblocks as it competes against other VR projects and emerging hardware, like Meta's.

The good news from the announcement to standardize is that most of the major tech companies likely to be involved in the metaverse are joining together to make sure it is an even playing field.

And even though Apple and Google aren't jumping on the standards bandwagon right now, there's nothing stopping them from getting onboard down the road.

The important part of having the same metaverse standards boils down to letting you jump into AR and VR the same way that your neighbor does – even if you are on a fancy laptop with a VR headset, and they are on a budget smartphone setup. The equipment might differ, but the landscape, its usage regulations, and its developers' practices could become more equitable.

Big tech companies pulling together to make sure there's a standardized metaverse for all is a big move, and will help to get everyone locked in – as soon as someone finally completes its development. Until then, we're not holding our breath.