nVidia GeForce Partner Program: Well Intention Marketing or Anti-Competitive

[Razor01]

Lets not post a link to [H] I don't think there is any need I will re post what I posted there here.

 

I have been a long time support of [H] and Kyle as many of you know. And still am.

 

With the recent GPP program, I can not support Kyle on this particular way of doing things.

 

I have consulted my corporate attorneys on this matter and they have stated the same things I have stated in the GPP article thread. Not only that, I took it a step further and posted anonymously on a site that asks for lawyer's opinions here

 

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/is-it-wise-for-a-company-to-talk-to-the-press-befo-3448943.html?post_answer_id=8254733&post_id=2274465#answer_8254733

 

Every single attorney that has responded and I have talked to, have stated irrevocably, by AMD (company B) going to the press prior to any potential lawsuit, it hurts theirs and OEM's chances of litigation. The ramifications can go farther than this as well is my understanding. If there is anything that doesn't align with what is going on with the program, with what Kyle reported, it could even come back to [H], in a really bad way. Kyle must answer this as I don't know if his attorneys were involved with talking with AMD's attorneys prior to the communication of this information.

 

I don't think they were as Kyle would have stipulated this in his article. If they weren't AMD could categorical deny anything that his article and his research uncovers and legally [H] will be held accountable for anything that comes up along with AMD to a lesser extent.

 

I applaud Kyle for bringing up this matter and the balls to do it, because its a slippery road. I wish the article could have taken into consideration why a company such as AMD, the potential benefactor of such a suit would come out and try to sway the public prior to any legal action taking place. They have a habit of doing this and I hope it doesn't go down the road that I have stated above because now [H] is on the hook for anything AMD does in this particular matter.

 

When litigation is concerned, the media is never a friend of the parties involved. The "victim" is also never a goody too shoes either, not when they do things like this.

[mr moose]

26 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

 

 

So Kyle's view of things are only for one thing sensationalism.  Currently there is no merit to his article.  This is why no other website or press member picked up the story, its all smoke and mirrors.

 

 

 

As I said right back at the start of all this, if Nvidia are that stupid to have actually done what they are being accused of then I will openly mock them. Because to me they would deserve it, Any company who would undertake such an idiotic course of action as the one HardOCP are claiming would be deserving of public humiliation.

 

However so far that is just it, it's an idiotic course of action with less than convincing arguments and no evidence.

[hobobobo]

Quote

Did these AIB/OEM have access to MDF and the other perks prior to GPP? Additionally, does the lack of MDF or “high effort engineering engagement” really hurt companies like Asus, MSI or Gigabyte? If something crucial like board allocation was being withheld then it would certainly be an issue but in the article you wrote it said it wasn’t directly spelled out in GPP but more of a wink and nod which sounds more like a rumor than anything concrete (if they are then they deserve to be sued).

Anyway, I’m bored of this topic so I’ll excuse myself from it.

Quote

 

I would suggest yes, and yes.

 

 

 

Id say this is the main issue with this program, if the quoted above to be belived. (Took it from [H] with the response being from Kyle) It is "extortion", and while i have no idea on the current terms of agreement between NV and AIBs or the exact wording of the GPP, god bless the soul who will leak it, it does reek of turning AIBs gaming brands into GeForce subbrands and pushing AMD, or intels future offerings, out of the gaming market. Legality of that escapes me, not a lawyer, but im quite sure this would fly in Russia, but probably not in EU with strong regulations regarding competative behaviour

 

 

[hobobobo]

woops, missclicked

[Razor01]

54 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

 

 

Id say this is the main issue with this program, if the quoted above to be belived. (Took it from [H] with the response being from Kyle) It is "extortion", and while i have no idea on the current terms of agreement between NV and AIBs or the exact wording of the GPP, god bless the soul who will leak it, it does reek of turning AIBs gaming brands into GeForce subbrands and pushing AMD, or intels future offerings, out of the gaming market. Legality of that escapes me, not a lawyer, but im quite sure this would fly in Russia, but probably not in EU with strong regulations regarding competative behaviour

 

 

 

 

Problem is its not.  At least not the way its worded and what we have seen so far.  Exclusivity and branding two different things and both of them do come with caveats when talking out strategic partnerships. 

 

Look at independent fast food joints, many of them can't have Coke and Pepsi, its one or the other.  I have a friend who is a VP of marketing at Pepsi, she told me that this is the case. 

 

Branding, this one is a bit tricky.  Geforce and Redeon, are not the sub brands.  They are the main brands, because they are the ones that gave the ROG or what ever brand their recognition.  But co branding also can and usual has exclusivity.  Have you ever wondered about those JC Penny or Blooming Dale, or retail, brands.  The actual owners of the companies that make those products give the rights for the retailer to use their product with the retail's brand on them. If they decide they don't like something those retailers are doing, they are in their full right to pull anything that has been agreed upon in contract.  Breach of contract, its straight forward.  Both parties in the instance must like the product and how they look and how they are advertised.  It can go further than too, where in a store they are placed.  What sales and how much discounts can be given.  There is a whole slew of things that can be done.

 

So as an example, lets say you are the owner of BBB, Big Baller Brand lol, yeah a bit on the nose right. I'm a top end baseball player am willing to endorse the BBB but only if I have my name on it too or my nickname.  As time goes on my brand becomes so strong, I decide wait up man, I want you to make my line stand apart from the rest of your brand.  Its certainly up to me to ask and if you don't do it, I will no longer endorse your brand.  Think about MJ and Air Jordan.  That was a sub brand of Nike, you think MJ would allow Nike to use his brand for anything?  Hell no, he asked them to make a separate brand just for him, and they did.  Which he was given part ownership of too if I'm not mistaken.

 

His brand sells those specific Nike shoes.  If it wasn't for MJ and NBA players in general, Nike would still be lower than Converse, Adidas etc on the chain.

 

This case nV, knows Geforce is what is selling, not ROG or Strix, what not.  They are using their market position to lock down their brand.  Which is legal, how far they are willing to take it that is another matter, we don't know anything about that, this program just started off, this month if I'm not mistaken.  So are things really happening unduly?  Might as well pick a card out of a deck and lets see who picks higher!

 

MDF we have no clue about yet, that can be a black hole like what Intel did or it could actually be just like it says it is.

[hobobobo]

5 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

 

 

Probably is its not.  At least not the way its worded and what we have seen so far.  Exclusivity and branding two different things and both of them do come with caveats when talking out strategic partnerships. 

 

Look at independent fast food joints, many of them can't have Coke and Pepsi, its one or the other.  I have a friend who is a VP of marketing at Pepsi, she told me that this is the case. 

 

Branding, this one is a bit tricky.  Geforce and Redeon, are not the sub brands.  They are the main brands, because they are the ones that gave the ROG or what ever brand their recognition.  But co branding also can and usual has exclusivity.  Have you ever wondered about those JC Penny or Blooming Dale, or retail, brands.  The actual owners of the companies that make those products give the rights for the retailer to use their product with the retail's brand on them. If they decide they don't' like something those retailers are doing, they are in their full right to pull anything that has been agreed upon in contract.  Breach of contract, its straight forward.

 

So as an example, lets say you are the owner of BBB, Big Baller Brand lol, yeah a bit on the nose right. I'm a top end baseball player am willing to endorse the BBB but only if I have my name on it too.  As time goes on my brand becomes so strong, I decide wait up man, I want you to make my line stand apart from the rest of your brand.  Its certainly up to me to ask and if you don't do it, I will no longer endorse you.  Think about MJ and Air Jordan.  That was a sub brand of Nike, you think MJ would allow Nike to use his brand for anything?  Hell no, he asked them to make a separate brand just for him, and they did.  Which he was given part ownership of too.

I would agree that legally it is not, but from a layman consumer standpoint it is. I dont like the analogies stated, the markets are way too different from GPUs. As i stated above, the closest analogy i can think of is qualcomm with their snapdragon chips, and while i think the same type of program will probably work for them, it would still be anti-competative to force lenovo or samsung to reserve their Moto or Galaxy brands for QCOM chips, while forcing them to develope new lineups for mediatek chips (and plain would not work with samsung, coz they can take the hit of not using QCOM offerings at all). Granted, SoC manufacturer is way less visible in the final product then AMD/NV (but not invisible), but it cant be argued that it is essential to the relatively same degree as the chips provided by nv/amd to AIBs. Anti-consumer part of the argument stems from the years of built mindshare and the ways this program exploits it, in the worst sense of the word exploit.

Ive skimmed through the [H] thread, and i would probably be in complete agreement with Kyle given the chance to read the program documentation. Mostly because i disagree that ROG/AORUS/Whatever 1060 is NV product, its as much of NV product as Moto X is qualcomms.

 

But then again, law regarding this kind of behaviour is shit, it is really hard to prove anything and there is no need for outright illegal behaviour when desired result can be achived through "soft" means

[WMGroomAK]

4 minutes ago, Razor01 said:

Probably is its not.  At least not the way its worded and what we have seen so far.  Exclusivity and branding two different things and both of them do come with caveats when talking out strategic partnerships. 

Reading the FTC site and the US Codes that they enact, I'm thinking if the effects of the contracts/partnerships occur as the original article describes, even if the contracts are not technically illegal, they will probably be viewed as anti-competitive by the FTC.  The complication comes up on if the contract as it's enacted creates a situation that is detrimental to nVidia's competition.  I think that in this case it would be viewed under Single Firm conduct given how much of the gaming GPU market that nVidia enjoys...  Of course, maybe nVidia ran their proposed language by the FTC and other major regulatory bodies first in order to obtain an opinion (good legal CYA), however, the longer that they and their partner OEMs and AIBs postpone in officially and on the record addressing Kyle's article, the worse it actually looks for them.

 

15 USC 2 Monopolizing Trade a felony: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2

15 USC 45 Unfair methods of competition unlawful: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/45

FTC Anticompetitive Practices: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices

 

[Razor01]

9 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

I would agree that legally it is not, but from a layman consumer standpoint it is. I dont like the analogies stated, the markets are way too different from GPUs. As i stated above, the closest analogy i can think of is qualcomm with their snapdragon chips, and while i think the same type of program will probably work for them, it would still be anti-competative to force lenovo or samsung to reserve their Moto or Galaxy brands for QCOM chips, while forcing them to develope new lineups for mediatek chips (and plain would not work with samsung, coz they can take the hit of not using QCOM offerings at all). Granted, SoC manufacturer is way less visible in the final product then AMD/NV (but not invisible), but it cant be argued that it is essential to the relatively same degree as the chips provided by nv/amd to AIBs. Anti-consumer part of the argument stems from the years of built mindshare and the ways this program exploits it, in the worst sense of the word exploit.

Ive skimmed through the [H] thread, and i would probably be in complete agreement with Kyle given the chance to read the program documentation. Mostly because i disagree that ROG/AORUS/Whatever 1060 is NV product, its as much of NV product as Moto X is qualcomms.

 

But then again, law regarding this kind of behaviour is shit, it is really hard to prove anything and there is no need for outright illegal behaviour when desired result can be achived through "soft" means

 

 

The law doesn't change because its a different industry.  Jurisprudence, the theory of law, in democratic countries is virtually the same.  Processes might be different but theory doesn't change.

 

You said it yourself with cell phones, those chip manufactures don't' have the pull like nV does right now.  nV there is no other brand that can compete with them.

 

I didn't say ROG/Asus are nV's brand.  What nV wants is their Geforce brand aligned and exclusive to those brands. This is completely legal, they can ask for this. If their brand is that strong their partners have to agree. 

 

This is the beginning of the wind fall of AMD's inability to compete in the graphics market for 2 generations.  AMD will not compete again this gen, and in all likelyhood the generation after that. 

 

Things are going to get much worse before they get better, if they get better.

[Razor01]

Just now, WMGroomAK said:

Reading the FTC site and the US Codes that they enact, I'm thinking if the effects of the contracts/partnerships occur as the original article describes, even if the contracts are not technically illegal, they will probably be viewed as anti-competitive by the FTC.  The complication comes up on if the contract as it's enacted creates a situation that is detrimental to nVidia's competition.  I think that in this case it would be viewed under Single Firm conduct given how much of the gaming GPU market that nVidia enjoys...  Of course, maybe nVidia ran their proposed language by the FTC and other major regulatory bodies first in order to obtain an opinion (good legal CYA), however, the longer that they and their partner OEMs and AIBs postpone in officially and on the record addressing Kyle's article, the worse it actually looks for them.

 

15 USC 2 Monopolizing Trade a felony: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2

15 USC 45 Unfair methods of competition unlawful: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/45

FTC Anticompetitive Practices: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices

 

 

 

Good links.  Yeah I agree it depends on how far they are willing to take the program.

[hobobobo]

4 hours ago, Razor01 said:

 

 

The law doesn't change because its a different industry.  Jurisprudence, the theory of law, in democratic countries is virtually the same.  Processes might be different but theory doesn't change.

 

You said it yourself with cell phones, those chip manufactures don't' have the pull like nV does right now.  nV there is no other brand that can compete with them.

 

I didn't say ROG/Asus are nV's brand.  What nV wants is their Geforce brand aligned and exclusive to those brands. This is completely legal, they can ask for this. If their brand is that strong their partners have to agree. 

 

This is the beginning of the wind fall of AMD's inability to compete in the graphics market for 2 generations.  AMD will not compete again this gen, and in all likelyhood the generation after that. 

 

Things are going to get much worse before they get better, if they get better.

The law may be the same, though its really not, but regulations are vastly different, market conditions are vastly different and, most important, public perception of those undustries is vastly different.

Phone chip manufacturers dont have NVs pull with everyone, but tons of OEMs would fail completly if QCOM wishes to lose some money, goodwill and other things.

Im saying that NV wants not alignment and exclusivity, but a takeover of those subbrands.

I strongly disagree, AMD has been competative, just not across all the segments, mid- to low-range they have been quite competative, but completly surrendered the top range. Its the wind of NVs magical win in mindshare, where even during the times of them having inferior products they were still considered the better ones, because NVidia = gaming, now they just wanna solidify that. No one argues its not AMDs fault for allowing that to happen (well, consumer fault as well, but the concept of informed consumer is not so popular with anyone), but its not like they are straight up uncompetative.

And things wont really get much worse for AMD, unless mining just straight up dies. Whether they will get better solely depends on the future offerings and how they market them

[Carclis]

The one thing that has me unsure is the ambiguous wording surrounding the exclusive gaming brand alignment with Nvidia. To me it looks like it could be worse than it appears. If it means that x company has to align one of it's gaming brands exclusively with Nvidia then that is one thing. But to require that x company cannot pair the competitions products with any gaming brand(s) they have would be a lot worse. Obviously both situations are extremely shady practices though.

[NMS]

I remember some people saying that AMDs supposed to be the "good guys" sarcastically. Now Nvidia is pulling stuff that is much worse.

 

Hey, Intel, can you go into the descrete GPU market?

[Dabombinable]

13 minutes ago, NMS said:

I remember some people saying that AMDs supposed to be the "good guys" sarcastically. Now Nvidia is pulling stuff that is much worse.

 

Hey, Intel, can you go into the descrete GPU market?

Intel can be (and has been) just as bad in the past....

[NMS]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

Intel can be (and has been) just as bad in the past....

But the point is to bring more competition to the market to knock some senses into these companies.

[Dabombinable]

4 minutes ago, NMS said:

But the point is to bring more competition to the market to knock some senses into these companies.

Intel really wouldn't add much to the GPU market...

[NMS]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

Intel really wouldn't add much to the GPU market...

That only depends on the final product, assuming they don't follow the steps of NZXT and their motherboard.

[mr moose]

43 minutes ago, NMS said:

I remember some people saying that AMDs supposed to be the "good guys" sarcastically. Now Nvidia is pulling stuff that is much worse.

 

Hey, Intel, can you go into the descrete GPU market?

There are no good guys in the corporate world.   

 

Just varying degrees of success.

[laminutederire]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

There are no good guys in the corporate world.   

 

Just varying degrees of success.

The worse they are the more success they have apparently. ( statistically acceptable when you look at nearly all industry sectors and finance... (and politics))

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, laminutederire said:

The worse they are the more success they have apparently. ( statistically acceptable when you look at nearly all industry sectors and finance... (and politics))

You've never been ripped of by a mechanic? got food poisoning from a dodgy hotdog?    In my world the smaller they are the more likely they are to be dodgy. 

[hobobobo]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

You've never been ripped of by a mechanic? got food poisoning from a dodgy hotdog?    In my world the smaller they are the more likely they are to be dodgy. 

At the same time the best pizza or coffe ive ever had have been from a small establishments, with just 1 location. Small business is less consistent, but thanks to that the lows are lower and the highs are higher. The bigger they are the more consistent goodish service you can expect, but excelence and big size rarely go hand in hand, competence does

[Deus Voltage]

14 minutes ago, mr moose said:

You've never been ripped of by a mechanic? got food poisoning from a dodgy hotdog?    In my world the smaller they are the more likely they are to be dodgy. 

The smaller they are the more likely they'll be dodgy and the less reach they'll have. You can apply the same logic for big companies, the only difference is that they'll have far more reach. 

 

Everyone knows this however, so a more interesting dilemma to consider is how do you compete successfuly without compromising ethics and values, whatever those words mean nowadays. 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, hobobobo said:

At the same time the best pizza or coffe ive ever had have been from a small establishments, with just 1 location. Small business is less consistent, but thanks to that the lows are lower and the highs are higher. The bigger they are the more consistent goodish service you can expect, but excelence and big size rarely go hand in hand, competence does

So if a wider variance in consistency relates to a smaller establishment size, then we agree the chances of encountering a willfully dodgy product or act increases as establishment size falls?  Otherwise all larger establishments would have to have a consistently observable rate of said dogdyness.

 

2 minutes ago, Deus Voltage said:

The smaller they are the more likely they'll be dodgy and the less reach they'll have. You can apply the same logic for big companies, the only difference is that they'll have far more reach. 

 

Everyone knows this however, so a more interesting dilemma to consider is how do you compete successfuly without compromising ethics and values, whatever those words mean nowadays. 

So reach determines how bad a dodgy act is does it?  Are you sure everyone knows that?  Have you considered the reverse to be true? that a large company is less dodgy because with such a large reach the potential cost of small dodgy incident is too great?  E.G a dodgy egg roll from one supermarket taints the entire chain of super markets, so they have better food handling policy across said supermarket chain.

[Deus Voltage]

16 minutes ago, mr moose said:

So if a wider variance in consistency relates to a smaller establishment size, then we agree the chances of encountering a willfully dodgy product or act increases as establishment size falls?  Otherwise all larger establishments would have to have a consistently observable rate of said dogdyness.

 

So reach determines how bad a dodgy act is does it?  Are you sure everyone knows that?  Have you considered the reverse to be true? that a large company is less dodgy because with such a large reach the potential cost of small dodgy incident is too great?  E.G a dodgy egg roll from one supermarket taints the entire chain of super markets, so they have better food handling policy across said supermarket chain.

I believe there is a slight misunderstanding. Perhaps I should have worded things differently. What I meant was that with bigger reach comes bigger responsibility.

 

Not that the small hot dog stand nearby should be less responsible than say AMD/Intel/Nvidia, food poisoning can actually lead to deaths in some cases, unlike buying a computer component.

 

However, the person selling hotdogs doesn't have a marketing team behind him/ her generating more reach and influence. Furthermore, the person selling hotdogs doesn't really have "monopoly" over the market. If they get caught poisoning people, at best they'll pay a hefty fine, at worst they'll be in jail. 

 

Large corporations have entire teams of lawyers and marketers dedicated to bettering the image of their company, that's where you start to see certain obfuscations at play as well as "evasiveness" with regards to legal loopholes.   

[asus killer]

11 minutes ago, mr moose said:

So if a wider variance in consistency relates to a smaller establishment size, then we agree the chances of encountering a willfully dodgy product or act increases as establishment size falls?  Otherwise all larger establishments would have to have a consistently observable rate of said dogdyness.

 

So reach determines how bad a dodgy act is does it?  Are you sure everyone knows that?  Have you considered the reverse to be true? that a large company is less dodgy because with such a large reach the potential cost of small dodgy incident is too great?  E.G a dodgy egg roll from one supermarket taints the entire chain of super markets, so they have better food handling policy across said supermarket chain.

if you don't mind me saying, i guess there are different things in the table. A gigantic company on a competitive market will use less dodgy stuff, say Macdonalds for example. A gigantic company on a monopoly or even a duopoly will tend to be more dodgy, and Nvidia is dodgy as is Intel. My 2 cents.

[Razor01]

10 hours ago, hobobobo said:

The law may be the same, though its really not, but regulations are vastly different, market conditions are vastly different and, most important, public perception of those undustries is vastly different.

Phone chip manufacturers dont have NVs pull with everyone, but tons of OEMs would fail completly if QCOM wishes to lose some money, goodwill and other things.

Im saying that NV wants not alignment and exclusivity, but a takeover of those subbrands.

I strongly disagree, AMD has been competative, just not across all the segments, mid- to low-range they have been quite competative, but completly surrendered the top range. Its the wind of NVs magical win in mindshare, where even during the times of them having inferior products they were still considered the better ones, because NVidia = gaming, now they just wanna solidify that. No one argues its not AMDs fault for allowing that to happen (well, consumer fault as well, but the concept of informed consumer is not so popular with anyone), but its not like they are straight up uncompetative.

And things wont really get much worse for AMD, unless mining just straight up dies. Whether they will get better solely depends on the future offerings and how they market them

Regulations are pretty much the same, we aren't talking about things like medical stuff here.  Just general consumer products.

 

What nV wants about the sub brand, yeah they want that, they can ask for that.  The problem right now is there is no AMD graphics to compete with nV graphics, and OEM's and AIB's most likely will do it.  they make 70% or more of their profits from their gaming brand graphics from nV cards.  This also goes for OEM's systems.

 

AMD is straight up not competitive.  The only card that is kinda competitive is rx 580 the problem there is its perf/watt is like Maxwell a gtx 970.  What does that cause, for lets say an OEM, they need the same type of cooling and power delivery that a system with a gtx 1070 has which will increase cost over a system with a the gtx 1060.  We are talking about may 10 to 20 bucks.  Its not much but over lets say 200k systems.  Yeah that's a lot of money. Its actually better for OEM's to do the switch just on their own side.  If I was on the negotiation table, I would have told AMD hey to keep our system costs the same with your rx580, we need you to drop the price of the rx580 so we can keep our over all cost to the consumer the same as the 1060.

 

Mining is helping AMD and nV both.  Actually nV cards are more profitable right now not by much.  I do mine and nV cards with the smaller alt coins makes more than AMD cards with ETN or ETH.  Just that most people don't know this yet.  And many are also looking forward to the ETH going POS end of this year so they want to mine as much ETH as possible.