The video card rivalry between AMD and Nvidia for years has been largely positive for customers. Constant attempts by both companies to outbid have resulted in better products and more options for PC enthusiasts.
However, Nvidia may have taken a step too far in March with the launch of the "GeForce Partnership Program". According to the company, the GPP was intended to give players "full transparency in the GPU platform" where they were sold. As HardOCP found out during a thorough investigation, the program that Nvidia had not revealed could have been much less tasty.
In summary, Nvidia appeared to be pushing its OEM partners - such as Gigabyte, MSI and Asus - to link their game brands exclusively to Nvidia products as a condition of joining the program.
Nvidia planned to offer GPP partners marketing development funds and "launch partner status" as membership incentives. Naturally, choosing not to join the GPP would place a company at a disadvantage compared to its competitors.
For example, if Asus wanted to join the GPP, he could only use his famous brand Republic of Gamers (ROG) on Nvidia cards. The AMD cards of the company should receive a different and less known brand image.
Interestingly, it's exactly what happened in April: Asus slapped the new brand "AREZ" on his AMD GPUs. This move has prompted many people, including AMD, to believe that Asus had chosen to follow Nvidia's rules.
It now seems that the controversy surrounding the GPP has become too painful for Nvidia.
In a blog post published today, Nvidia's marketing director, John Teeple, announced that he was officially putting the finishing touches on the GPP. In the following blog excerpt, Teeple briefly explains Nvidia's initial intentions with the program and the company's decision to cancel it:
With GPP, we asked our partners to mark their products in a way that is crystal clear. The choice of the GPU largely defines a gaming platform. Thus, the GPU brand should be clearly transparent - no replacement GPUs hidden behind a stack of technological jargon.
Most of the partners were in agreement. They own their brands and GPP has not changed that. They decide how they want to deliver their product promise to the players. Yet today, we shoot the pin on GPP to avoid any distraction from the super exciting work we are doing to bring amazing advances to PC games.
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