NVIDIA Terminates GeForce Partner Program
by Ryan Smith on May 4, 2018 8:00 PM EST
Just as quickly as it came into being, NVIDIA’s GeForce Partner Program has come to an end.
In a short article posted to their website today, NVIDIA’s Director of Product Marketing, John Teeple, announced that the program has been cancelled. In making the unexpected decision, Teeple stated “The rumors, conjecture and mistruths go far beyond its [the GeForce Partner Program’s] intent. Rather than battling misinformation, we have decided to cancel the program” and that “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.” No further information was provided on just what canceled entails, and what this means for existing program partners.
NVIDIA’s GeForce Partner Program is been divisive, to put it lightly. After news of it broke in March and was confirmed by NVIDIA, the program quickly attracted a good deal of negative attention out of concerns over what it meant for the competitive market, and a general degree of mean spiritedness. Adding fuel to the fire, few details of the program were ever confirmed by NVIDIA – with the company seeing little benefit in doing so – which left a great void open for rumors and unsourced reports of all kinds.
Ultimately NVIDIA’s goal with the program was to more thoroughly isolate its partner ecosystem, in the process ensuring that GeForce-aligned brands were just that: GeForce aligned, and that non-GeForce products weren’t sold under the same brand. NVIDIA cited this as a means of transparency so that consumers could be confident that they were buying GeForce products. In practice, the program left NVIDIA with a credibility problem, and the lack of details means that we’ll likely never know for sure the true extent of NVIDIA’s motivations with the program.
Even with this change, NVIDIA is looking to portray it as a positive (or at least neutral) change, noting that “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.” Still, the lack of transparency means that it’s not clear what happens next for NVIDIA, or for that matter their partners who were already participating.
Some partners, particularly industry juggernaut ASUS, had already realigned their brands and had launched their AMD-specific brands, in ASUS’s case the new-yet-old Arez brand. The termination of the GeForce Partner Program presumably leaves the door open to ASUS folding these products back into their existing brands. However what they’ll actually do remains to be seen. It does no doubt bring a sigh of relief to AMD themselves, as AMD stood to be the biggest (corporate) loser as a result of the program, and has been ramping up their own “Freedom of Choice” advertising program.
Ultimately at the end of the day this means that the video card market returns to a state of status quo, at least for however long the newly revived status quo lasts.
Pulling the Plug on GPP, Leaning into GeForce
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: NVIDIA
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VoraciousGorak - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
I have installed, right now, Windows 10 x64 on a Pentium D 965XE box.Opencg - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
Yet nobody cares about the locked bios because they are idiots. Just look at the comments nobody even knows what you are talking about. And yet they are so dumb they still reply.Opencg - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
Lol not well said. At all. There are tons of people who care about the advantages of gsync. Anyone who cares about responsiveness in gaming. Input lag. Pixel overdrive. Minimal blur reduction crosstalk and color quality. Fact is that without a nvidia certification many vendors would continue to misrepresent these. Lol it has "1ms pixel response" tho. Without websites that go deep in measurements with osciloscopes of which there are few and fewer reviews still, and without spending ALOT of money testing out monitors or using only the monitors your friends can show you, you would have no way of knowing if you are buying something with good or crap tech driving the panel. I mean you are still caught up on open vrr though thats fine. I may buy an amd card some day but when I do I'll still be happy to have my gsync screen. Yeah vrr is great but it doesnt mean much if your monitor is blury and laggy compared to the gsync one.nerd1 - Monday, May 7, 2018 - link
Who cares if their stuffs are proprietary? Their GPU are simply better for gaming and computation.Creig - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
Well, Nvidia GPU's are "better" for computation only if you don't care whether they actually give you the correct answer or not.https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/21/nvidia_ti...
nikon133 - Monday, May 7, 2018 - link
Diehards are the biggest sheep, on average. It is not only Apple's El Dorado.darkchazz - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
So if I want a VRR monitor for my PC using an nvidia card, I'm locked to a few select gaming brands nvidia deem worthy right?Even if I want a simple 4k60 IPS monitor with VRR I only have a couple of choices. Monitors that look straight out of a transformers movie.
Why can't I use the inferior open standard VRR if I don't want an over-the-top gaming monitor?
Alexvrb - Sunday, May 6, 2018 - link
"Why can't I use the inferior open standard VRR if I don't want an over-the-top gaming monitor?"Bingo. Although the same problem applies to gaming monitors too. If you're a gamer on a budget you want speed first and foremost. You can get a fairly fast (~144hz) display with FreeSync for ~$100-200 less than an equivalent Gsync panel. Yes, it's not as good... but if you don't have the money, FreeSync is a LOT better than No Sync. The problem is that if you're eyeing a low- or mid-range Geforce and you don't have the money for Gsync, you end up with No Sync regardless of your display's capabilities. It's a crock.
piroroadkill - Monday, May 7, 2018 - link
I have a 1080 Ti. I don't give a shit if GSync is better, and I'm happy for NVIDIA to keep supporting it, but I would really like VESA Adaptive Sync support on my 1080 Ti. Thanks.Mark42 - Saturday, May 5, 2018 - link
The Program so obviouisly violates EU (and probably other) regulations. See the Intel case.So what where they thinking?
Was Nvidia so silly that they were not awere of that?
Or did they want to try it anyway and by the time the EU tells them "you can't do that" they officially cancel / change the program. But by then the the partners have already invested so much in their new brands that they keep them and Nvidia still has achieved their goal?