Slashdot Mirror
Nvidia Shuts Down Its GeForce Partner Program, Citing Misinformation (theregister.co.uk)
In a blog post on Friday, Nvidia announced it is "pulling the plug" on the GeForce Partner Program (GPP) due to the company's unwillingness to combat "rumors" and "mistruths" about the platform. The GPP has only been active for a couple of months. It was launched as a way for gamers to know exactly what they're buying when shopping for a new gaming PC. "With this program, partners would provide full transparency regarding the installed hardware and software in their products," reports Digital Trends. From the report: Shortly after the launch, unnamed sources from add-in card and desktop/laptop manufacturers came forward to reveal that the program will likely hurt consumer choice. Even more, they worried that some of the agreement language may actually be illegal while the program itself could disrupt the current business they have with AMD and Intel. They also revealed one major requirement: The resulting product sports the label "[gaming brand] Aligned Exclusively with GeForce." As an example, if Asus wanted to add its Republic of Gamers (RoG) line to Nvidia's program, it wouldn't be allowed to sell RoG products with AMD-based graphics. Of course, manufacturers can choose whether or not to join Nvidia's program, but membership supposedly had its "perks" including access to early technology, sales rebate programs, game bundling, and more.
According to Nvidia, all it asked of its partners was to "brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear." The company says it didn't want "substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno-jargon." Specifications for desktops and laptops tend to list their graphics components and PC gamers are generally intelligent shoppers that don't need any clarification. Regardless, Nvidia is pulling the controversial program because the "rumors, conjecture, and mistruths go far beyond" the program's intent.
According to Nvidia, all it asked of its partners was to "brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear." The company says it didn't want "substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno-jargon." Specifications for desktops and laptops tend to list their graphics components and PC gamers are generally intelligent shoppers that don't need any clarification. Regardless, Nvidia is pulling the controversial program because the "rumors, conjecture, and mistruths go far beyond" the program's intent.
PC gamers are generally intelligent shoppers that don't need any clarification
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I heard the entire document was leaked absolutely word for word verbatim. But no, guys, it's misinformation and misinterpretations. I am not misinformed about bullying your competition out of top product line names. That is what that was, the end.
Convincing PC makers like Dell and HP to join a program where they got special access and prices to Intel CPUs, in exchange for an exclusivity contract which prohibited the PC maker from selling AMD computers?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
What they actually meant: "You were all right about the GPP and what we were trying to do with it, we got caught red-handed and it backfired spectacularly, and now we'll just try to sweep it all under the rug as quickly and unceremoniously as possible."
"Hmm. How can I improve this clever and understated mathematical pun? Oh, I know, I'll apply the subtlety of a political cartoon where a big bag of money is labelled 'money' to it!"
Not to be confused with a Trump algebra, which also generally involves lies.
And you had to bring politics into a conversation/thread that had nothing, and I mean NOTHING to with it. WHY? Does it somehow make you feel better? I guess I am just getting old because it makes no sense to me what so ever why peeps here do this. It's not funny, It doesn't make one look or sound smarter. Adds NOTHING to the conversation. To me it sounds like this. We love cars, cars are great. cars can go fast. Trump. The yellow ones are better.
The card manufacturer brands simply aren't that strong, all the publicity about about brand splitting was just giving AMD free advertising with no benefit to NVIDIA. Worse, if they force ASUS to create new brands for AMD they might just launch Freesync only high end monitors ,,, which is not at all to NVIDIA's benefit.
Some manager thought he was clever and tried to turn third party hardware partnership into just as effective an anti-competitive tool as software support, but they just don't work the same. Not so clever.
AMD's cards have gotten surprisingly better over the years. They're actually considered the best choice for Linux gaming. The official drivers are good, but the open source drivers are even better.
It used to always be the case that no self-respecting Linux user used ATI/AMD cards. You'd buy an NVIDIA because they're the only cards that had any decent driver support. You'd also run the official drivers because nv sucks all the dicks and nouveau is only barely tolerable for non-gaming purposes.
We truly are living in a backwards, bizzare world right now, aren't we? In less than 10 years, the Linux gaming community has gone from running NVIDIA cards with official drivers to running AMD cards with open source drivers. What the hell did NVIDIA do to slump so far, and so fast?
There certainly are a lot of crappy cards out there claiming to be good enough for modern gaming. Where your tirade breaks down is that nVidia is no less guilty of it than anyone else. It's called having a product line, and a low-end nVidia card falls far behind a high end Radeon card.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And now they claim that their probably quite illegal act has just been "misunderstood" and is hence somebody else's fault. I think they pretty much panicked when they talked to some actually competent lawyers about what they had done. May also gave gotten some friendly warnings and an ultimatum from the competition.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"...even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans." --Douglas Adams
According to Nvidia, all it asked of its partners was to "brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear."
My laptop has a sticker on it that says "Powered by nVidia Quadro" How much more clear do they need to be?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Telling people that they "misunderstood" when they understood perfectly well is gaslighting. If that's really what's happening then it's really sad that they stoop to that level.
"Misinformation".
Caught trying to bully people for exclusivity, products already came out to prove the dirty tactic was working, and refused to reply to questions made by costumers, people covering the subject, and whatnot.
More likely caught red handed with shady tactics to corner the market and wanted to avoid a lawsuit.
See guys, it wasn't only that nVidia was trying to put nVidia products into a separate brand than the competition, it's that they wanted exclusivity, they were shutting down access for bloggers and YouTubers for covering the subject, and the whole thing was done under threats against manufacturers and brands not being able to have access to all the benefits of a partner program if they didn't follow suit.
The very basic strategy of "do you know who we are? If you don't do this you will never work with us again".
Branding doesn't come cheap, which means most smaller manufacturers and even bigger ones didn't really want to create an entire new brand just to differentiate something that every freaking gamer worth their money already knew about. Most of the branding they've created for gamers was exactly that - to different products that were for gaming. Not to differentiate products that used x brand of graphics card.
So what it effectively does is putting an extra barrier for smaller manufacturers to offer a line with AMD cards.
And why the f*ck should nVidia be allowed to mandate desktop and laptop manufacturers to create a separate brand for their cards alone?
Should manufacturers now also create a new brand only for Intel Wi-fi chips? For y brand of Ram memory? etc etc... see, of course the specs have to be clear, but there is no reason to force manufacturers to create separate branding for each and every component on a gaming rig.
Can you imagine anyone in this particular market category being confused about desktops and laptops coming with an nVidia graphics card and an AMD one? With all the labeling and all the front page specs ads that we have?
I agree. Unfortunately also quite non-surprising. Just a standard technique to avoid responsibility and put a "spin" on things.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.