It’s official. NVIDIA’s GeForce Partner Program has been killed off by NVIDIA after weeks of controversy surrounding the potential implications, not helped by the news that ASUS launched the AREZ line as their new home for formerly RoG-branded products which utilized Radeon GPUs.

In a blog post, NVIDIA had the following to say;

Quote

A lot has been said recently about our GeForce Partner Program. The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program.

GPP had a simple goal – ensuring that gamers know what they are buying and can make a clear choice.

NVIDIA creates cutting-edge technologies for gamers. We have dedicated our lives to it. We do our work at a crazy intense level – investing billions to invent the future and ensure that amazing NVIDIA tech keeps coming. We do this work because we know gamers love it and appreciate it. Gamers want the best GPU tech. GPP was about making sure gamers who want NVIDIA tech get NVIDIA tech.

With GPP, we asked our partners to brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear. The choice of GPU greatly defines a gaming platform. So, the GPU brand should be clearly transparent – no substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno-jargon.

Most partners agreed. They own their brands and GPP didn’t change that. They decide how they want to convey their product promise to gamers. Still, today we are pulling the plug on GPP to avoid any distraction from the super exciting work we’re doing to bring amazing advances to PC gaming.

This is a great time to be a GeForce partner and be part of the fastest growing gaming platform in the world. The GeForce gaming platform is rich with the most advanced technology. And with GeForce Experience, it is “the way it’s meant to be played.”

Source: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2018/05/04/gpp/

If you’re like some of the other guys on here, you may be cringing a bit at the statement, especially the part where it was implied that the purpose of the GPP was to ensure that gamers who want NVIDIA tech know what they’re getting (which is contradicted with the fact that the boxes already do the job more than well enough). Well, don’t feel too awkward because this is pretty much a typical damage-control type of PR statement aimed to reduce whatever damage the controversy had done to NVIDIA’s image.

If you need a refresher, the GeForce Partner Program is a program for AIBs which grants them first-level access to new tech from NVIDIA along with advice from engineers along with free publicity. NVIDIA states that it is not compulsory to join the program though it would be fair to assume that companies may lose out on competitiveness if they do not join versus those that have joined. However, one unmentioned portion (and one that has been controversial) is that when part of the program, the respective company’s core gaming brand must be exclusively aligned towards GeForce GPUs, meaning that if for instance, ASUS joined the GPP (which they did), that would mean that their core gaming brand, the Republic of Gamers, would need to have their GPU-line be GeForce-exclusive, which also means that the Radeon cards would need to have the RoG branding stripped and branded as something else.

This has several implications, chief among which is that this places AMD and other potential competitors in a further uncompetitive position in the mainstream sector due to the general Tom, Dick and Harry’s tendency to pick parts based on brand rather than based on the actual product. A customer who isn’t tech-savvy would definitely know “Republic of Gamers” but “AREZ” may be relatively unknown to them. NVIDIA’s cancellation of the GPP has a lot to do with this controversy but even though the GPP is dead, the damage is already done.

Many of the rival offerings have already had their gaming brands from their respective companies stripped and either placed in a lower, “non-gaming” tier or placed in a new brand that has been created due to the GPP (such as the aforementioned AREZ lineup from ASUS). The death of the GPP does not necessarily mean that companies will immediately start to put the Radeon GPUs back into their gaming lineup as rebranding isn’t as simple and requires a bit of resources to make it work, especially when trying to build it up again. Plus, there’s no reason to doubt that NVIDIA may try something similar in the future, albeit in a more subtle manner.

While the effects of the GPP wouldn’t affect the product that you and I enthusiasts end up getting since the basic product is the same with a different brand, competition is important in the industry and what NVIDIA has done shouldn’t be overlooked. The GPP may be dead but its effects linger on.