Stefan Mileschin

Says most partners agreed to it

There was a lot of talk about Nvidia's Geforce Partners Program during the last few months, and now it can finally all end with Nvidia pulling the plug on the entire program.

The company certainly took a lot of flak from what was described as a bullying behavior which forced partners to focus their developed and highly-marketed brands on Nvidia GPUs alone, with some rather harsh repercussions if they decline, at least according to rumors. The result was that some rather big companies like Asus, MSI, and others, focused their gaming brands on Nvidia GPUs but also create new brands that will focus on AMD GPUs, like the Asus AREZ brand.

The original story about the GPP and its impact on the industry was brought by HardOCP's Kyle Bennett, who suggested that it will greatly, and negatively, impact consumer choice in the AIB and OEM computer market. He also added that while GPP looked good on the surface, it has some hidden parts that were questionably legal and forced GPP exclusive partners to sell only Nvidia-based GPUs or risk some rather harsh retributions that would include loss of game bundles, Marketing Development Funds (MDF), and other support from Nvidia.

We do know that partners were not happy with the GPP but I honestly do not agree that it would have a big impact on the market or AIBs as they simply created new brands that would sell AMD GPUs, just like Asus did with the AREZ brand. In the end, big OEMs like Dell and HP were never going to agree on those terms and Nvidia simply could not afford to lose such big customers.

According to Nvidia's blog, written by John Teeple, responsible for Geforce Partner Marketing at Nvidia, "the rumors, conjecture, and mistruths went far beyond the intent" of the Geforce Partner Program and "rather than battling misinformation", the company has decided to cancel the program. In the same blog post, Nvidia says that most partners agreed and that GPP can't change the fact that partners own their own brands, the information that has surfaced certainly suggest otherwise.

In any case, the Nvidia GPP has kicked the bucket and the result is a new AREZ brand from Asus unless they also decide to cancel it. Of course, Nvidia still has The Way It's Meant To Be Played program.

https://fudzilla.com/news/graphics/4...artner-program